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A DEFENCE 



MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 



BY 



ALFRED R. WALLACE, F. R. S, 

AUTHOR OF " THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO.* 

"EXPLORATIONS ON THE AMAZON," "THE THEORY 

OF NATURAL SELECTION,'' 

ETC., ETC. 



WITH A PREFACE 

By EPES SARGENT. 
FOURTH THOUSAND. 

BOSTOJSI : 
COLBY AND RICH, 

9 Montgomery Place. 

1874. 



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PREFACE. 



The signs are, that both the moral and the religious sys- 
tems of the future will be greatly modified by the advance 
of science. They will be more and more conformed to the 
facts of nature ; not only to the facts which a diligent Ma- 
1 erialism, working in a single direction, has brought to light, 
but to the transcendent facts which Modern Spiritualism 
has restored and proved. The one order of facts is incom- 
plete without the other; and Materialism is as surely 
doomed to be encircled and transfigured by the wider 
horizon of Spiritualism, as the Ptolemaic system of the 
universe was doomed to be superseded by the Copernican. 

Unpopular facts often encounter an opposition quite as 
persistent as that which follows unpopular theories ; and so 
intelligent Spiritualists are not disturbed by the antagonism 
which their facts have met with from the Huxleys, Tyndalls, 
Carpenters, and Biichners of our day. All these men, 
working as they are for science in their different ways, 
though under the disadvantage of an ignorance of certain 
phenomena of vast significance, are welcomed as fellow- 
laborers in the cause of truth by Spiritualists ; for the latter, 
relying on their facts, are confident that genuine Science 
includes them all, and that every new discovery must be in 
harmony with all that they hold as true. Opposition to the 
phenomena, proceeding as it does from lack of knowledge, 
simply indicates the magnitude and astonishing character 
of the facts themselves, which could excite such incredulity 
in the face of such overwhelming testimony. 

Among the men of science who have either admitted the 
facts, or both the facts and the theory, of Spiritualism, are 
Hare, chemist ; Varley, F. R. S., electrician ; Flammarion, 
astronomer ; Crookes, F. R. S., chemist ; Hoefle, author of 
the " History of Chemistry ; " Nichols, chemist ; Fichte, phi- 



IV PREFACE. 

losopher ; Liais, astronomer ; Hermann Goldschmidt, astron- 
omer, and the discoverer of fourteen planets ; Von Esenbach, 
the greatest modern German botanist ; Huggins, F. R. S., 
astronomer and spectroscopist ; De Morgan, mathematician ; 
Dille, physicist ; Elliotson, Ashburner, and Gray, physicians 
and surgeons. To no one eminent man of science, how- 
ever, has Spiritualism been more indebted than to Alfred 
Russell Wallace, F. R. S., distinguished for his researches 
in natural history, paleontology, and anthropology. His 
" Defence of Spiritualism," here presented, appeared origi- 
nally in the London Fortnightly Review for May and June, 
1874. Containing as it does the latest facts, no better tract 
for Spiritualists to offer as an answer to their opponents has 
yet appeared. 

Mr. Wallace, though he arrived, simultaneously with 
Mr. Darwin, at similar conclusions in regard to the origin 
of species, differs from him on a most important point ; for 
Mr. Wallace believes that " a superior intelligence is neces- 
sary to account for man." His acquaintance with the phe- 
nomena of Spiritualism must always give him, in the sweep 
and comprehensiveness of his anthropology, a great advan- 
tage over Mr. Darwin. Besides his great work on the 
" Natural History of the Malay Archipelago," and an account 
of his " Explorations on the Amazon," Mr. Wallace is the 
author of " The Theory of Natural Selection," and of many 
valuable papers in scientific journals. Dr. Hooker, presi- 
dent of the British Scientific Association, wrote, in 1868, 
" Of Mr. Wallace, and his many contributions to philosoph- 
ical biology, it is not easy to speak without enthusiasm ; 
for, putting aside their great merits, he, throughout his many 
writings, with a modesty as rare as I believe it to be in him 
unconscious, forgets his own unquestionable claims to the 
honor of having originated, independently of Mr. Darwin, 
the theories which he so ably defends." 

The testimony of such an investigator as Mr. "Wallace 
in behalf of the stupendous phenomena of Spiritualism is 
not to be lightly put aside or ignored. What can be said in 
reply to such an array of facts as he presents ? E. S. 



A DEFENCE 



OP 



MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 



It is with great diffidence, but under an imperative sense of 
duty, that the present writer accepts the opportunity afforded 
him of submitting to his readers some general account of a 
widespread movement, which, though for the most part 
treated with ridicule or contempt, he believes to embody 
truths of the most vital importance to human progress.* The 
subject to be treated is of such vast extent, the evidence 
concerning it is so varied and so extraordinary, the preju- 
dices that surround it are so inveterate, that it is not possi- 
ble to do it justice without entering into considerable detail. 
The reader who ventures on the perusal of the succeeding 
pages may, therefore, have his patience tried; but if he 
is able to throw aside his preconceived ideas of what is 
possible and what is impossible, and in the acceptance or 

* The following are the more important works which have heen used in 
the preparation of this article: Judge Edmonds's "Spiritual Tracts, 1 ' 
New York, 1858-1860. Robert Dale Owen's "Footfalls on the Boundary 
of Another World, " Triibner& Co., 1861. E. Hardinge's " Modern Amer- 
ican Spiritualism, " New York, 1870. Robert Dale Owen's "Debatable 
Land between this World and tbe Next, ' ' Trtibner & Co. , 1871. ' ' Report 
on Spiritualism of the Committee of the Loudon Dialectical Society," 
Longmans & Co., 1871. "Year-Book of Spiritualism," Boston and Lon« 
don, 1871. Hudson Turtle's "Arcana of Spiritualism," Boston, 1871. 
The Spiritual Magazine, 1861-1874. The Spiritualist Newspaper, 1872- 
1874. The Medium and Daybreak, 1869-1874. 



6 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

rejection of the evidence submitted to him will carefully 
weigh and be solely guided by the nature of the concur- 
rent testimony, the writer ventures to believe that he will not 
find his time and patience ill bestowed. 

Few men, in this busy age, have leisure to read massive 
volumes devoted to special subjects. They gain much of their 
general knowledge, outside the limits of their profession or of 
any peculiar study, by means of periodical literature ; and, as 
a rule, they are supplied with copious and accurate, though 
general, information. Some of our best thinkers and workers 
make known the results of their researches to the readers of 
magazines and reviews ; and it is seldom that a writer whose 
information is meagre, or obtained at second-hand, is permit- 
ted to come before the public in their pages as an authorita- 
tive teacher. But as regards the subject we are now about to 
consider, this rule has not hitherto been followed. Those who 
have devoted many years to an examination of its phenomena 
have been, in most cases, refused a hearing ; while men who 
have bestowed on it no adequate attention, and are almost 
wholly ignorant of the researches of others, have alone sup- 
plied the information to which a large proportion of the pub- 
lic have had access. In support of this statement it is neces- 
sary to refer, with brief comments, to some of the more promi- 
nent articles in which the phenomena and pretensions of 
Spiritualism have been recently discussed. 

At the beginning of the present year the readers of this 
Review were treated to "Experiences of Spiritualism," by a 
writer of no mean ability, and of thoroughly advanced views. 
He assures his readers that he "conscientiously endeavored 
to qualify himself for speaking on this subject " by attending 
five seances, the details of several of which he narrates ; and 
he comes to the conclusion that mediums are by no means in- 
genious deceivers, but "jugglers of the most vulgar order j" 
that the "spiritualistic mind falls a victim to the most patent 
frauds," and greedily "accepts jugglery as manifestations of 
spirits"; and, lastly, that the mediums are as credulous as 
their dupes, and fall straightway into any trap that is laid for 
them. Now, on the evidence before him, and on the assump- 
tion that no more or better evidence would have been forth- 
coming had he devoted fifty instead of five evenings to the in- 
quiry, the conclusions of Lord Amberley are perfectly logical ; 
but, so far from what he witnessed being a " specimen of the 
kind of manifestations by which Spiritualists are convinced," 
a very little acquaintance with the literature of the subject 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 7 

would have shown him that no Spiritualist of any mark was 
ever convinced by any quantity of such evidence. In an arti- 
cle published since Lord Amberley's— in Loudon Society for 
February — the author, a barrister and well-known literary 
man, says : 

" It was difficult for me to give in to the idea that solid ob- 
jects could be conveyed, invisibly, through closed doors, or 
that heavy furniture could be moved without the interposi- 
tion of hands. Philosophers will say these things are abso- 
lutely impossible ; nevertheless, it is absolutely certain that 
they do occur. I have met in the houses of private friends, 
as witnesses of these phenomena, persons whose testimony 
would go for a good deal in a court of justice. They have in- 
cluded peers, members of parliament, diplomatists of the high- 
est rank, judges, barristers, physicians, clergymen, members 
of learned societies, chemists, engineers, journalists, and 
thinkers of all sorts and degrees. They have suggested and 
carried into effect tests of the most rigid and satisfactory char- 
acter. The media (all non-professional) have been searched 
before and after seances. The precaution has even been 
taken of providing them unexpectedly with other apparel. 
They have been tied ; they have been sealed ; they have been 
secured in every cunning and dexterous manner that ingenu- 
ity could devise, but no deception has been discovered and no 
imposture brought to light. Neither was there any motive 
for imposture. No fee or reward of any kind depended upon 
the success or non-success of the manifestations." 

Now here we have a nice question of probabilities. We 
must either believe that Lord Amberley is almost infinitely 
more acute than Mr. Dunphy and his host of eminent friends 
— so that after five seances (most of them failures) he has got 
to the bottom of a mystery in which they, notwithstanding 
their utmost endeavors, still hopelessly flounder — or, that the 
noble lord's acuteness does not surpass the combined acute- 
ness of all these persons ; in which case their much larger ex- 
perience, and their having witnessed many things Lord Am- 
berley has not witnessed, must be held to have the greater 
weight, and to show, at all events, that all mediums are not 
"jugglers of the most vulgar order." 

In October last the New Quarterly Magazine, in its opening 
number, had an article entitled "A Spiritualistic Seance;" 
but which proved to be an account of certain ingenious con- 
trivances by which some of the phenomena usual at seances 
were imitated, and both Spiritualists and skeptics deceived 
and confounded. This appears at first sight to be an exposure 
of Spiritualism, but it is really very favorable to its preten- 
sions; for it goes on the assumption that the marvelous 



8 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

phenomena witnessed do really occur, but are produced by- 
various mechanical contrivances. In this case the rooms 
above, below, and at the side of that in which the seance waa 
held had to be prepared with specially constructed machinery, 
with assistants to work it. The apparatus, as described, 
would cost at least £100, and would then only serve to produce 
a few fixed phenomena, such as happen frequently in private 
houses and at the lodgings of mediums who have not exclu- 
sive possession of any of the adjoining rooms, or the means of 
obtaining expensive machinery and hired assistants. The ar- 
ticle bears internal evidence of being altogether a fictitious 
narrative ; but it helps to demonstrate, if any demonstration 
is required, that the phenomena which occur under such pro- 
tean forms and varied conditions, and in private houses quite 
as often as at the apartments of the mediums, are in no way 
produced by machinery. 

Perhaps the most prominent recent attack on Spiritualism 
was that in the Quarterly Review for October, 1871, which is 
known to have been written by an eminent physiologist, and 
did much to blind the public to the real nature of the move- 
ment. This article, after giving a light sketch of the reported 
phenomena, entered into some details as to planchette- writ- 
ing and table-lifting— facts on which no Spiritualist depends 
as evidence to a third party— and then proceeded to define its 
standpoint as follows : 

" Our position, then, is that the so-called spiritual communi- 
cations come from within, not from without, the individuals 
who suppose themselves to be the recipients of them ; that 
they belong to the class termed ' subjective ' by physiologists 
and psychologists, and that the movements by which they are 
expressed, whether the tilting of tables or the writing of 
planchettes, are really produced by their own muscular action 
exerted independently of their own wills and quite uncon- 
sciously to themselves." 

Several pages are then devoted to accounts of seances 
which, like Lord Amberley's, were mostly failures ; and to the 
experiences of a Bath clergyman who believed that the com- 
munications came from devils ; and, generally, such weak 
and inconclusive phenomena only are adduced as can be 
easily explained by the well-worn formulse of "unconscious 
cerebration," " expectant attention," and " unconscious mus- 
cular action." A few of the more startling physical phe- 
nomena are mentioned merely to be discredited and the judg- 
ment of the witnesses impugned ; but no attempt is made to 
place before the reader any information as to the amount or 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 9 

the weight of the testimony to such phenomena, or to the long 
series of diverse phenomena which lead up to and confirm 
them. Some of the experiments of Prof. Hare and Mr. 
Crookes are quoted and criticised in the spirit of assuming 
that these experienced physicists were ignorant of the sim- 
plest principles of mechanics, and failed to use the most or- 
dinary precautions. Of the numerous and varied cases on 
record, of heavy bodies being moved without direct or indi- 
rect contact by any human being, no notice is taken, except 
so far as quoting Mr. C. F. Yarley's statement, that he had 
seen, in broad daylight, a small table moved ten feet, with 
no oue near it but himself, and not touched by him—" as an 
example of the manner in which minds of this limited order 
are apt to become the dupes of their own imaginings." 

This article, like the others here referred to, shows in the 
writer an utter forgetfulness of the maxim, that an argu- 
ment is not answered till it is answered at its best. Amid 
the vast mass of recorded facts now accumulated by Spiritu- 
alists, there is, of course, much that is weak and inconclu- 
sive, much that is of no value as evidence, except to those 
who have independent reasons for faith in them. From this 
undigested mass it is the easiest thing in the world to pick 
out arguments that can be refuted and facts that can be ex- 
plained away ; but what is that to the purpose ? It is not 
these that have convinced any one ; but those weightier, oft- 
repeated and oft-tested facts which the writers referred to in- 
variably ignore. 

Prof. Tyndall has also given the world (in his " Frag- 
ments of Science," published in 1871) some account of his at- 
tempt to investigate these phenomena. Again, we have a 
minute record of a seance which was a failure, and in which 
the Professor, like Lord Amberley, easily imposed on some 
too credulous Spiritualists by improvising a few manifesta- 
tions of his own. The article in question is dated as far back 
as 1864. We may therefore conclude that the Professor has 
not seen much of the subject ; nor can he have made himself 
acquainted with what others have seen and carefully verified, 
or he would hardly have thought his communication worthy 
of the place it occupies among original researches and posi- 
tive additions to human knowledge. Both its facts and its 
reasonings have been well replied to by Mr. Patrick Fraser 
Alexander, in his little work entitled " Spiritualism ; a Nar- 
rative and a Discussion," which we recommend to those who 
care to see how a very acute yet unprejudiced mind looks at 



10 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

the phenomena, and how inconclusive, even from a scientific 
standpoint, are the experiences adduced by Prof. Tyndall. 

The discussion in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1868, and a con- 
siderable private correspondence, indicates that scientific men 
almost invariably assume that, in this inquiry, they should be 
permitted, at the very outset, to impose conditions ; and if, 
under such conditions, nothing happens, they consider it a 
proof of imposture or delusion. But they well know that, in 
all other branches of research, Nature, not they, determines 
the essential conditions, without a compliance with which no 
experiment will succeed. These conditions have to be learnt 
by a patient questioning of Nature, and they are different for 
each branch of science. How much more may they be ex- 
pected to differ in an inquiry which deals with subtle forces 
of the nature of which the physicist is wholly and absolutely 
ignorant ! To ask to be allowed to deal with these unknown 
phenomena as he has hitherto dealt with known phenomena, 
is practically to prejudge the question, since it assumes that 
both are governed by the same laws. 

From the sketch which has now been given of the recent 
treatment of the subject by popular and scientific writers, 
we can summarize pretty accurately their mental attitude in 
regard to it. They have seen very little of the phenomena 
themselves, and they cannot believe that others have seen 
much more. They have encountered people who are easily 
deceived by a little unexpected trickery, and they conclude 
that the convictions of Spiritualists generally are founded on 
phenomena produced, either consciously or unconsciously, in 
a similar way. They are so firmly convinced, on a priori 
grounds, that the more remarkable phenomena said to hap- 
pen do not really happen, that they will back their convic- 
tion against the direct testimony of any body of men, prefer- 
ring to believe that they are all the victims of some mysteri- 
ous delusion whenever im posture is out of the question. To 
influence persons in this frame of mind, it is evident that 
more personal testimony to isolated facts is utterly useless. 
They have, to use the admirable expression of Dr. Carpenter, 
" no place in the existing fabric of their thought into which 
such facts can be fitted." It is necessary, therefore, to modi- 
fy the " fabric of thought " itself ; and it appears to the pres- 
ent writer that this can best be done by a general historic 
sketch of the subject, and by showing, by separate lines of 
inquiry, how wide and varied is the evidence, and how re- 
markably these lines converge toward one uniform conclu- 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 11 

sion. The endeavor will be made to indicate, by typical ex- 
amples of each class of evidence and without unnecessary 
detail, the cumulative force of the argument. 



HISTORICAL SKETCH. 

Modern Spiritualism dates from March, 1848 ; it being then 
that, for the first time, intelligent communications were held 
with the unknown cause of the mysterious knockings and 
other sounds, similar to those which had disturbed the Mom- 
pesson and Wesley families in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries. This discovery was made by Miss Kate Fox, a 
girl of nine years old, and the first recognized example of an 
extensive class now known as mediums. It is worthy of re- 
mark that this very first " modern spiritual manifestation " 
was subjected to the test of unlimited examination by all the 
inhabitants of the village of Hydesville, New York. Though 
all were utter skeptics, no one could discover any cause for 
the noises, which continued, though with less violence, when 
all the children had left the house. Nothing is more common 
than the remark that it is absurd and illogical to impute 
noises, of which we cannot discover the cause, to the agency 
of spirits. So it undoubtedly is when the noises are merely 
noises ; but is it so illogical when these noises turn out to be 
signals, and signals which spell out a fact, whichfact, though 
wholly unknown to all present, turns out to be true ? Yet, 
on this very first occasion, twenty-six years ago, the signals 
declared that a murdered man was buried in the cellar of the 
house ; it indicated the exact spot in the cellar under which 
the body lay ; and upon digging there, at a depth of six 
or seven feet, considerable portions of a human skeleton 
were found. Yet more: the name of the murdered man 
was given, and it was ascertained that such a person had vis- 
ited that very house and had disappeared five years before, 
and had never been heard of since. The signals further de- 
clared that he, the murdered man, was the signaller ; and as 
all the witnesses had satisfied themselves that the signals 
were not made by any living person or by any assignable 
cause, the logical conclusion from the facts was, that it was 
the spirit* of the murdered man ; although such a conclusion 

*It may be as well here to explain that the word "spirit," which is 
often considered, to be so objectionable by scientific men, is used through- 
out this article (or at all events in the earlier portions of it) merely to avoid 
circumlocution, in the sense of the ' ' intelligent cause of the phenomena, ' ' 
and not as implying ' ' the spirits of the dead, ' ' unless so expressly stated. 



12 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

might be to some in the highest degree improbable, and to 
others in the highest degree absurd. 

The Misses Fox now became involuntary mediums, and the 
family (which had removed to the city of Eochester) were 
accused of imposture, and offered to submit the children to 
examination by a committee of townsmen appointed in pub- 
lic meeting. Three committees were successively appointed ; 
the last, composed of violent skeptics who had accused the 
previous committees of stupidity or connivance. But all 
three, after unlimited investigation, were forced to declare 
that the cause of the phenomena was undiscoverable. The 
sounds occurred on the wall and floor while the mediums, 
after being thoroughly searched by ladies, " stood on pillows, 
barefooted, and with their clothes tied round their ankles." 
The last and most skeptical committee reported that, "They 
had heard sounds, and failed utterly to discover their origin. 
They had proved that neither machinery nor imposture had 
been used ; and their questions, many of them being mental, 
were answered correctly." When we consider that the me- 
diums were two children under twelve years of age, and the 
examiners utterly skeptical American citizens, thoroughly 
resolved to detect imposture, and urged on by excited public 
meetings, it may perhaps be considered that even at this early 
stage the question of imposture or delusion was pretty well 
settled in the negative. 

In a short time persons who sat with the Misses Fox found 
themselves to have similar powers in a greater or less degree ; 
and in two or three years the movement had spread over a 
large part of the United States, developing into a variety of 
strange forms, encountering the most violent skepticism and 
the most rancorous hostility, yet always progressing, and 
making converts even among the most enlightened and best 
educated classes. In 1851, some of the most intelligent men 
in New York— judges, senators, doctors, lawyers, merchants, 
clergymen and authors— formed themselves into a society for 
investigation. Judge Edmonds was one of these ; and a 
sketch of the kind and amount of evidence that was required 
to convince him will be given further on. In 1854 a second 
spiritual society was formed in New Yoi f k. It had the names 
of four judges and two physicians among its Vice-Presidents, 
showing that the movement had by this time become respect- 
able, and that men in high social positions were not afraid of 
identifying themselves with it. A little later Professor Mapes, 
an eminent agricultural chemist, was led to undertake the in- 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 13 

vestigation of Spiritualism. He formed a circle of twelve 
friends, most of them men of talent, and skeptics, who bound 
themselves to sit together weekly, with a medium, twenty 
times. For the first eighteen evenings the phenomena were 
so trivial and unsatisfactory that most of the party felt dis- 
gusted at the loss of time ; but the last two sittings produced 
phenomena of so startling a character that the investigation 
was continued by the same circle for four years, and all be- 
came Spiritualists. 

By this time the movement had spread into every part of 
the Union, and, notwithstanding that its adherents were 
abused as impostors or dupes, that they were in several cases 
expelled from colleges and churches and were confined as 
lunatics, and that the whole thing was "explained" over 
and over again— it has continued to spread up to the present 
hour. The secret of this appears to have been, that the ex- 
planations given never applied to the phenomena continually 
occurring, and of which there were numerous witnesses. A 
medium was raised in the air in a crowded room in full day- 
light. ("Modern American Spiritualism," p. 279.) A sci- 
entific skeptic prepared a small portable apparatus, by which 
he could produce an instantaneous illumination ; and, taking 
it to a dark seance at which numerous musical instruments 
were played, suddenly lighted up the room while a large 
drum was being violently beaten, in the certain expectation 
of revealing the impostor to the whole company. But what 
they all saw was the drumstick itself beating the drum, with 
no human being near it. It struck a few more blows, then 
rose into the air and descended gently on to the shoulder of 
a lady. (Same work, p. 337.) At Toronto, Canada, in a 
well-lighted room, an accompaniment to a song was played 
on a closed and locked piano. (Same work, p. 463.) Com- 
munications were given in raised letters on the arm of an ig- 
norant servant girl, who often could not read them. They 
sometimes appeared while she was at her household work, 
and after being read by her master or mistress would disap- 
pear. (Same work, p. 196.) Letters closed in any number 
of envelopes, sealed up or even pasted together over the 
whole of the written surface, were read and answered by 
certain mediums in whom this special power was developed. 
It mattered not what language the letters were written in ; 
and it is upon record that letters in German, Greek, Hebrew, 
Arabic, Chinese, French, Welsh and Mexican, have been cor- 
rectly answered in the corresponding languages by a medium 



14 A DEFENCE OF MODEBN SPIKITUALISM. 

who knew none of them. (Judge Edmonds's "Letters on 
Spiritualism," pp. 59-103, Appendix.) Other mediums drew 
portraits of deceased persons whom they had never known 
or heard of. Others healed diseases. But those who helped 
most to spread the belief were, perhaps, the trance speakers, 
who, in eloquent and powerful language, developed the prin- 
ciples and the uses of Spiritualism, answered objections, 
spread abroad a knowledge of the phenomena, and thus in- 
duced skeptics to inquire into the facts ; and inquiry was al- 
most invariably followed by conversion. Having repeatedly 
listened to three of these speakers who have visited this coun- 
try, I can bear witness that they fully equal, and not unf re- 
quently surpass our best orators and preachers ; whether in 
finished eloquence, in close and logical argument, or in the 
readiness with which appropriate and convincing replies are 
made to all objectors. They are also remarkable for the per- 
fect courtesy and suavity of their manner, and for the ex- 
treme patience and gentleness with which they meet the most 
violent opposition and the most unjust accusations. 

Men of the highest rank and greatest ability became con- 
vinced by these varied phenomena. No amount of educa- 
tion, of legal, medical or scientific training, was proof against 
the overwhelming force of the facts, whenever these facts 
were systematically and perseveringly inquired into. The 
number of Spiritualists in the Union is, according to those 
who have the best means of judging, from eight to eleven mil- 
lions. This is the estimate of Judge Edmonds, who has had 
extensive correspondence on the subject with every part of 
the United States. The Hon. E. D. Owen, who has also had 
great opportunities of knowing the facts, considers it to be 
approximately correct ; and it is affirmed by the editors of 
the ' ' Year-Book of Spiritualism" for 1871. These numbers 
have been held to be absurdly exaggerated by persons having 
less information, especially by strangers who have made su- 
perficial inquiries in America ; but it must be remembered 
that the Spiritualists are to a very limited extent an organ- 
ized body, and that the mass of them make no public profes- 
sion of their belief, bat still remain members of some denom- 
inational church— circumstances that would greatly deceive 
an outsider. Nevertheless, the organization is of considera- 
ble extent. There were in America, in 1870, 20 State Asso- 
ciations and 105 Societies of Spiritualists, 207 lecturers, and 
about the same number of public mediums. 

In other parts of the world the movement has progressed 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 15 

more or less rapidly. Several of the more celebrated Ameri- 
can mediums have visited this country, and not only made 
converts in all classes of society, but led to the formation of 
private circles and the discovery of mediumistic power in 
hundreds of families. There is scarcely a city or a consider- 
able town in Continental Europe at the present moment 
where Spiritualists are not reckoned by hundreds, if not by 
thousands. There are said, on good authority, to be fifty 
thousand avowed Spiritualists in Paris and ten thousand in 
Lyons ; and the numbers in England may be roughly es- 
timated by the fact that there are four exclusively spiritual 
periodicals, one of which has a circulation of five thousand 
weekly. 



DEDUCTIONS FROM THE PRECEDING SKETCH. 

Before proceeding to a statement of the evidence which has 
convinced the more educated and more skeptical converts, let 
us consider briefly the bearing of the undoubted fact, that (to 
keep within bounds) many thousands of well-informed men, 
belonging to all classes of society and all professions, have, in 
each of the great civilized nations of the world, acknowledged 
the objective reality of these phenomena ; although, almost 
without exception, they at first viewed them with dislike or 
contempt, as impostures or delusions. There is nothing par- 
allel to it in the history of human thought ; because there 
never before existed so strong and apparently so well-founded 
a conviction that phenomena of this kind never have hap- 
pened and never can happen. It is often said, that the num- 
ber of adherents to a belief is no proof of its truth. This re- 
mark justly applies to most religions whose arguments appeal 
to the emotions and the intellect but not to the evidence of the 
senses. It is equally just as applied to a great part of modern 
science. The almost universal belief in gravitation, and in 
the undulatory theory of light, does not render them in any 
degree more probable ; because very few indeed of the believ- 
ers have tested the facts which most convincingly demonstrate 
those theories, or are able to follow out the reasoning by which 
they are demonstrated. It is for the most part a blind belief 
accepted upon authority. But with these spiritual phenom- 
ena the case is very different. They are to most men so new, 
so strange, so incredible, so opposed to their whole habit of 
thought, so apparently opposed to the pervading scientific 



16 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

spirit of the age, that they cannot and do not accept them on 
second-hand evidence, as they do almost every other kind of 
knowledge. The thousands or millions of Spiritualists, there- 
fore, represent to a very large extent men who have witnessed, 
examined, and tested the evidence for themselves, over and 
over and over again, till that which they had at first been un- 
able to admit could be true, they have at last been compelled 
to acknowledge is true. This accounts for the utter failure 
of all the attempted " exposures " and " explanations " to con- 
vince one solitary believer of his error. The exposers and 
explainers have never got beyond those first difficulties which 
constitute the pons asinorum of Spiritualism, which every be- 
liever has to get over, but at which early stage of investiga : 
tion no converts are ever made. By explaining table-turning, 
or table-tilting, or raps, you do not influence a man who was 
never convinced by these, but who, in broad daylight, sees 
objects move without contact, and behave as if guided by intel- 
ligent beings ; and who sees this in a variety of forms, in a 
variety of places, and under such varied and stringent condi- 
tions, as to make the fact to him just as real as the movement 
of iron to the magnet. By explaining automatic writing 
(which itself convinces no one but the writer, and not always 
even him), you do not affect the belief of the man who has ob- 
tained writing when neither pencil nor paper was touched by 
any one ; or has seen a hand not attached to any human body 
take up a pencil and write ; or, as Mr. Andrew Leighton, of 
Liverpool, testifies, has seen a pencil rise of itself on a table 
and write the words : " And is this icorld of strife to end in 
dust at last?" Thus it is that there are so few recantations or 
perverts in Spiritualism ; so few, that it may be truly said 
there are none. After much inquiry and reading I can find 
no example of a man who, having acquired a good personal 
knowledge of all the chief phases of the phenomena, has sub- 
sequently come to disbelieve in their reality. If the " expla- 
nations" and "exposures" were good for anything, or if it 
w^ere an imposture to expose or a delusion to explain, this 
could not be the case, because there are numbers of men who 
have become convinced of the facts, but who have not accept- 
ed the spiritual theory. These are, for the most part, in an 
uncomfortable and unsettled frame of mind, and would gladly 
welcome an explanation which really explained anything — 
but they find it not. As an eminent example of this class, I 
may mention Dr. J. Lockhart Robertson, long one of the ed- 
itors of the Journal of Mental Science— a physician who, hav- 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 17 

ing made mental disease his special study, would not be easily 
taken in by any psychological delusions. The phenomena he 
witnessed fourteen years ago were of a violent character ; a 
very strong table being, at his own request and in his own 
house, broken to pieces while he held the medium's hands. 
He afterwards himself tried to break a remaining leg of the 
table, but failed to do so after exerting all his strength. An- 
other table was tilted over while all the party sat on it. He 
subsequently had a sitting with Mr. Home, and witnessed the 
usual phenomena occurring with that extraordinary medium 
— such as the accordion playing "most wonderful music with- 
out any human agency," "a shadow hand, not that of any 
one present, which lifts a pencil and writes with it," &c, &c; 
and he says that he can "no more doubt the physical mani- 
festations of (so-called) Spiritualism than he would any other 
fact— as, for example, the fall of an apple to the ground of 
which his senses informed him." His record of these phe- 
nomena, with the confirmation by a friend who was present, 
is published in the " Dialectical Society's Report on Spiritual- 
ism," p. 247 ; and, at a meeting of Spiritualists in 1870, he re- 
asserted the facts, but denied their spiritual origin. To such 
a man the Quarterly Reviewer's explanations are worthless ; 
yet it may be safely said, that every advanced Spiritualist has 
seen more remarkable, more varied, and even more inexplica- 
ble phenomena than those recorded by Dr. Robertson, and is 
therefore still further out of reach of the arguments referred 
to, which are indeed only calculated to convince those who 
know little or nothing of the matter. 



EVIDENCE OF THE FACTS. 

The subject of the evidences of the objective phenomena of 
Spiritualism is such a large one that it will be only possible 
here to give a few typical examples, calculated to show how 
wide is their range, and how conclusively they reach every 
objection that the most skeptical have brought against them. 
This may perhaps be best done by giving, in the first place, 
an outline of the career of two or three well-known mediums ; 
and, in the second, a sketch of the experiences and investiga- 
tions of a few of the more remarkable converts to Spiritual- 
ism. 

Career of Bemarhable Mediums.— Miss Kate Fox, the little 
girl of nine years old, who, as already stated, was the first 
2 



18 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

"medium" in tlie modern sense of the term, has continued 
to possess the same power for twenty-six years. At the very 
earliest stages of the movement, skeptic after skeptic, com- 
mittee after committee endeavored to discover " the trick ;" 
but if it was a trick this little girl baffled them all, and the 
proverbial acuteness of the Yankee was of no avail. In 1860, 
when Dr. Robert Chambers visited America, he suggested to 
his friend, Robert Dale Owen, the use of a balance to test the 
lifting power. They accordingly, without prearrangement 
with the medium, took with them a powerful steelyard, and 
suspended from it a dining- table weighing one hundred and 
twenty-one pounds. Then, under a bright gas-light, the feet 
of the two mediums (Miss Fox and her sister) being both 
touched by the feet of the gentlemen, and the hands of all 
present being held over but not touching the table, it was 
made lighter or heavier at request, so as to weigh at one time 
only sixty, at another one hundred and thirty-four pounds. 
This experiment, be it remembered, was identical with one 
proposed by Faraday himself as being conclusive. Mr. Owen 
had many sittings with Miss Fox, for the purpose of test, and 
the precautions he took were extraordinary. He sat with 
her alone ; he frequently changed the room without notice ; he 
examined every article of furniture ; he locked the doors and 
fastened them with strips of paper privately sealed ; he held 
both the hands of the medium. Under these conditions vari- 
ous phenomena occurred, the most remarkable being the illu- 
mination of a piece of paper (which he had brought himself, 
cut of a peculiar size, and privately marked,) showing a dark 
hand writing on the floor. The paper afterwards rose up on 
to the table with legible writing upon it, containing a promise 
which was subsequently verified. ("Debatable Land," p. 
293.) 

But Miss Fox's powers were most remarkably shown in the 
seances with Mr. Livermore, a 'well-known New York bank- 
er, and an entire skeptic before commencing these experi- 
ments. These sittings were more than three hundred in 
number, extending over five years. They took place in four 
different houses (Mr. Livermore's and the medium's being 
both changed during this period), under tests of the most 
rigid description. The chief phenomenon was the appear- 
ance of a tangible, visible and audible figure of Mr. Liver- 
more's deceased wife, sometimes accompanied by a male 
figure, purporting to be Dr. Franklin. The former figure 
was often most distinct and absolutely life-like. It moved 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN" SPIRITUALISM. 19 

various objects in the room. It wrote messages on cards. It 
was sometimes formed out of a luminous cloud, and again 
vanished before the eyes of the witnesses. It allowed a por- 
tion of its dress to be cut off, which, though at first of strong 
and apparently gauzy material texture, yet in a short time melt- 
ed away and became invisible. Flowers which melted away 
were also given. These phenomena occurred best when Mr. 
L. and the medium were alone ; but two witnesses were occa- 
sionally admitted, who tested everything and confirmed Mr. 
L.'s testimony. One of these was Mr. Livermore's physician, 
the other his brother-in-law ; the latter previously a skeptic. 
The details of these wonderful seances were published in the 
Spiritual Magazine in 1862 and 1863 ; and the more remark- 
able are given in Owen's "Debatable Land," from which 
work a good idea may be formed of the great variety of the 
phenomena that occurred and the stringent character of the 
tests employed. 

Miss Fox recently came to England, and here also her pow- 
ers have been tested by a competent man of science, and 
found to be all that has been stated. She is now married to 
an English barrister, and some of the strange phenomena 
which have so long accompanied her attach themselves to 
her infant child, even when its mother is away, to the great 
alarm of the nurse. We have here, therefore, a career of 
twenty-six years of mediumship of the most varied and re- 
markable character ; mediumship which has been scrutinized 
and tested from the first hour of its manifestation down to 
this day, and with one invariable result— that no imposture 
or attempt at imposture has ever been discovered, and no 
cause ever been suggested that will account for the phenome- 
na except that advanced by Spiritualists. 

Mr. Daniel D. Home is perhaps the best known medium in 
the world i and his powers have been open to examination 
for at least twenty years. Nineteen years ago Sir David 
Brewster and Lord Brougham had a sitting with him— suffi 
ciently acute and eminent observers, and both, of course 
thorough skeptics. In the " Home Life of Sir David Brew 
ster," we have, fortunately, his own record of this sitting 
made at the time, although six months later, in a letter to the 
Morning Advertiser, he made the contradictory statement : 
" I saw enough to satisfy myself they could all be produced 
by human hands and feet." He says : " The table actually 
rose from the ground when no hand was upon it;" and "a 



20 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

small hand- bell was laid down with its mouth on the carpet, 
and it actually rang when nothing could have touched it. 
The hell was then placed on the other side, still upon the car- 
pet, and it came over to me and placed itself in my hand. It 
did the same to Lord Brougham. " And he adds, speaking for 
both, " We could give no explanation of them, and could not 
conjecture how they could be produced by any kind of 
mecnanism." Coming from the author of " Letters on Natu- 
ral Magic," this is pretty good testimony. 

These and far more marvelous phenomena have been re- 
peated from that day to this many thousands of times, and 
almost always in private houses at which Mr. Home visits. 
Everybody testifies to the fact that he offers the most ample 
facilities for investigation ; and to this I can myself bear wit- 
ness, having been invited by him to examine as closely as I 
pleased an accordion, held by his one hand, keys downward, 
and in that position playing very sweetly. But perhaps the 
best-attested and most extraordinary phenomenon connected 
with Mr. Home's mediumship is what is called the fire-test. 
In a state of trance he takes a glowing coal from the hottest 
part of a bright fire and carries it round the room, so that 
every one may see and feel that it is a real one. This is testi- 
fied by Mr. H. D. Jencken, Lord Lindsay, Lord Adare, Miss 
Douglas, Mr. S. C, Hall, and many others. But, more strange 
still, when in this state he can detect the same power in other 
persons, or convey it to them. A lump of red-hot coal was 
once placed on Mr. S. C. Hall's head in the presence of Lord 
Lindsay and four other persons. Mrs. Hall, in a communi- 
cation to the Earl of Dunraven (given in the Spiritual Maga- 
zine, 1870, p. 178), says : 

"Mr. Hall was seated nearly opposite to where I sat ; and 
I saw Mr. Home, after standing about half a minute at the 
back of Mr. Hall's chair, deliberately place the lump of burn- 
ing coal on his head ! I have often wondered that I was not 
frightened, but I was not ; I had perfect faith that he would 
not be injured. Some one said, 'Is it not hot?' Mr. Hall 
answered", 'Warm, but not hot!' Mr. Home had moved a 
little way, but returned, still in a trance ; he smiled, and 
seemed quite pleased, and then proceeded to draw up Mr. 
Hall's white hair over the red coal. The white hair had the 
appearance of silver thread over the red coal. Mr. Home 
drew the hair into a sort of pyramid, the coal, still red, show- 
ing beneath the hair." 

When taken off the head — which it had not in the slightest 
degree injured or singed the hair — others attempted to touch 
it, and were burnt. Lord Lindsay and Miss Douglas have 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 27 

also had hot coals placed in their hands, and they describe 
them as feeling rather cold than hot ; though at the same time 
they burn any one else, and even scorch the face of the hold- 
er if approached too closely. The same witnesses also testi- 
fy that Mr. Home has placed red-hot coals inside his waist- 
coat without scorching his clothes, and has put his face into 
the middle of the fire, his hair falling into the flames, yet not 
being the least singed. The same power of resisting fire can 
be temporarily given to inanimate objects. Mr. H. Nisbet, 
of Glasgow, states ("Human Nature," Feb., 1870) that, in 
his own house, in January, 1870, Mr. Home placed a red-hot 
coal in the hands of a lady and gentleman, which they only 
felt warm ; and then placed the same piece on a folded news- 
paper, burning a hole through eight layers of paper. He then 
took a fresh and blazing coal and laid it on the same news- 
paper, carrying it about the room for three minutes, when 
the paper was found, this time, not to have been the least 
burnt. Lord Lindsay further declares— and as one of the few 
noblemen who do real scientific work his evidence must be of 
some value— that on eight occasions he has had red-hot coals 
placed on his own hand by Home without injury. Mr. W. 
H. Harrison ("Spiritualist," March 15th, 1870) saw him take 
a large coal, which covered the palm of his hand, and stood 
six or seven inches high. As he walked about the room it 
threw a ruddy glow on the walls, and when he came to the 
table with it, the heat was felt in the faces of all present. 
The coal was thus held for five minutes. These phenomena 
have now happened scores of times in the presence of scores 
of witnesses. They are facts, of the reality of which there 
can be no doubt ; and they are altogether inexplicable by the 
known laws of physiology and heat. 

The powers of Mr. Home have lately been independently 
tested by Serjeant Cox and Mr. Crookes, and both these gen- 
tlemen emphatically proclaim that he invites tests and courts 
examination. Serjeant Cox, in his own house, has had a new 
accordion (purchased by himself that very day) play by it- 
self, in his own hand, while Mr. Home was playing the piano. 
Mr. Home then took the accordion in his left hand, holding it 
with the keys downwards while playing the piano with his 
right hand, "and it played beautifully in accompaniment to 
the piano, for at least a quarter of an hour." ("What Am 
I?" Vol. II., p. 388.) 

As to the possibility of these things being produced by 
trick, if further evidence than their mere statement be re- 



22 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

quired, we have the following by Mr. T. Adolphus Trollope, 
who says, "I may also mention that Bosco, one of the great- 
est professors of legerdemain ever known, in a conversation 
with me upon the subject, utterly scouted the idea of the pos- 
sibility of such phenomena as I saw produced by Mr. Home 
being performed by any of the resources of his art." 

Mr. Home's life has been to a great extent a public one. 
He has spent much of his time as a guest in the houses of 
people of rank and talent. He numbers among his friends 
many who are eminent in science, art, and literature — men 
certainly not inferior in perceptive or reasoning power to 
those who, not having witnessed the_j?henoinena, disbelieve 
in their occurrence. For twenty years he has been exposed 
to the keen scrutiny and never-ceasing suspicion of innumer- 
able inquirers ; yet no proof has ever been given of trickery, 
no particle of machinery or apparatus ever been detected. 
But the phenomena are so stupendous that, if impostures, 
they could only be performed by machinery of the most elab- 
orate, varied and cumbrous nature, requiring the aid of sev- 
eral assistants and confederates. The theory that they are 
delusions is equally untenable, unless it is admitted that there 
is no possible means of distinguishing delusion from reality. 

The last medium to whose career I shall call attention is 
Mrs. Guppy (formerly Miss Nichol) , and in this case I can 
give some personal testimony. I knew Miss Nichol before 
she had ever heard of Spiritualism, table-rapping, or anything 
of the kind, and we first discovered her powers on asking her 
to sit for experiment in my house. This was in November, 
1866, and for some months we had constant sittings, and I 
was able to watch and test the progress of her development. 
I first satisfied myself of the rising of a small table complete- 
ly off the floor, when three or four persons (including Miss 
N.) placed their hands on it. I tested this by secretly attach- 
ing threads or thin strips of paper underneath the claws, so 
that they must be broken if any one attempted to raise the ta- 
ble with their feet, the only available means of doing so. The 
table still rose a full foot off the floor in broad daylight. In 
order to show this to friends with less trouble, I made a^cylin- 
cter of hoops and brown paper, in which I placed the table so 
as to keep feet and dresses away from it while it rose, which 
it did as freely as before. Perhaps more marvelous was the 
placing of Miss N. herself on the table ; for although this al- 
ways happened in the dark, yet, under the conditions to be 



A DEFENCE OF MODEEN SPIRITUALISM. 23 

named, deception was impossible. I will relate one sitting of 
which I have notes. We sat in a friend's house, round a cen- 
tre table, under a glass chandelier. A friend of mine, but a 
perfect stranger to all the rest, sat next Miss Nichol and held 
both her hands. Another person had matches ready to strike 
a light when required. What occurred was as follows : First, 
Miss Nichol's chair was drawn away from under her, and she 
was obliged to stand up, my friend still holding both her 
hands. In a minute or two more I heard a slight sound, such 
as might be produced by a person placing a wine-glass on the 
table, and at the same time a very slight rustling of clothes 
and tinkling of the glass pendants of the chandelier. Imme- 
diately my friend said, "She is gone from me." A light was 
at once struck, and we found Miss N". quietly seated in hei 
chair on the centre of the table, her head just touching the 
chandelier. My friend declared that Miss N. seemed to glide 
noiselessly out of his hands. She was very stout and heavy, 
and to get her chair on the table, to get upon it herself, in the 
dark, noiselessly, and almost instantaneously, with five or six 
persons close around her, appeared, and still appears to me, 
knowing her intimately, to be physically impossible. 

Another very curious and beautiful phenomenon was the 
production of delicate musical sounds, without any object cal- 
culated to produce them being in the room. On one occasion 
a German lady, who was a perfect stranger to Miss Nichol, 
and had never been at a seance before, was present. She 
sang several German songs, and most delicate music, like a 
fairy musical-box, accompanied her throughout. She sang 
four or five different songs of her own choice, and all were so 
accompanied. This was in the dark, but hands were joined 
all the time. 

The most remarkable feature of this lady's mediumship is 
the production of flowers and fruits in closed rooms. The 
first time this occurred was at my own house at a very early 
stage of her development. All present were my own friends. 
Miss Nichol had come early to tea, it being mid- winter, and 
she had been with us in a very warm gas-lighted room four 
hours before the flowers appeared. The essential fact is, that 
upon a bare table in a smail room closed and dark (the ad- 
joining room and passage being well lighted), a quantity of 
flowers appeared, which were not there when we put out the 
gas a few minutes before. They consisted of anemones, tu- 
lips, chrysanthemums, Chinese primroses, and several ferns. 
All were absolutely fresh, as if just gathered from a conser- 



24 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

vatory. They were covered with a fine, cold dew. Not a 
petal was crumpled or broken, not the most delicate point or 
pinnule of the ferns was out of place. I dried and preserved 
the whole, and have, attached to them, the attestation of all 
present that they had no share, as far as they knew, in bring- 
ing the flowers into the room. I believed at the time, and 
still believe, that it was absolutely impossible for Miss 1ST. to 
have concealed them so long, to have kept them so perfect, and, 
above all, to produce them covered throughout with a most 
beautiful coating of dew, just like that which collects on the 
outside of a tumbler when filled with very cold water on a 
hot clay. 

Similar phenomena have occurred hundreds of times since, 
in many houses and under various conditions. Sometimes 
the flowers have been in vast quantities, heaped upon the ta- 
ble. Often flowers or fruits asked for are brought. A friend 
of mine asked for a sunflower, and one six feet high fell upon 
the table, having a large mass of earth about its roots. One 
of the most striking tests was at Florence, with Mr. T. Ado! • 
phus Trollope, Mrs. Trollope, Miss Blagden, and Colonel 
Harvey. The room was searched by the gentlemen ; Mrs. 
Guppy was undressed and redressed by Mrs. Trollope, every 
article of her clothing being examined. Mr. and Mrs. Guppy 
were both firmly held while at the table. In about ten min- 
utes all the party exclaimed that they smelt flowers, and, on 
lighting a candle, both Mrs. Guppy's and Mr. Trollope's arms 
were found covered with jonquils, which filled the room with 
their odor. Mr. Guppy and Mr. Trollope both relate this in 
substantially the same terms. (" Dialectical Society's Report 
on Spiritualism," pp. 277 and 372.) 

Surely these are phenomena about which there can be no 
mistake. What theories have ever been proposed by our sci- 
entific teachers which even attempt to account for them? 
Delusion it cannot be, for the flowers are real and can be pre- 
served, and imposture under the conditions described is even 
less credible. If the gentlemen who came forward to enlight- 
en the public on the subject of " so-called spiritual manifesta- 
tions " do not know of the various classes of phenomena that 
have now been indicated, and the weight of the testimony in 
support of them, they are palpably unqualified for the task 
they have undertaken. That they do know of them, but keep 
back their knowledge, while putting forward trivialities easy 
to laugh at or expose, is a supposition I cannot for a moment 
entertain. Before leaving this part of the subject, it is well to 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 25 

note the fact of the marked individuality of each medijm. 
They are not copies of each other, but each one develops a 
characteristic set of phenomena— a fact highly suggestive of 
some unconscious occult power in the individual, and wholly 
opposed to the idea of either imposture or delusion, both of 
which almost invariably copy preexisting models. 

Investigations oy some Notable Skeptics.-— In. giving some ac- 
count of how a few of the more important converts to Spirit- 
ualism became convinced, we are of course limited to those 
who have given their experiences to the public. I will first 
take the case of the eminent American lawyer, the Hon. J. W. 
Edmonds, commonly called Judge Edmonds ; and it may be 
as well to let English skeptics know what he is thought of by 
his countrymen. When he first became a Spiritualist he was 
greatly abused ; and it was even declared that he consulted 
the spirits on his judicial decisions. To defend himself, he 
published an "Appeal to the Public," giving a full account 
of the inquiries which resulted in his conversion. In noticing 
this, the New York Evening Mirror said: "John W.Ed- 
monds, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of this Dis- 
trict, is an able lawyer, an industrious judge and a good citi- 
zen. For the last eight years occupying without interruption 
the highest judicial stations, whatever may be his faults no 
one can justly accuse him of a lack of ability, industry, hon- 
esty or fearlessness. No one can doubt his general saneness, 
or can believe for a moment that the ordinary operations of 
his mind are not as rapid, accurate and reliable as ever. Both 
by the practitioners and suitors at his bar he is recognized as 
the head, in fact and in merit, of the Supreme Court for this 
District." A few years later he published a series of letters 
on Spiritualism in the New York Tribune ; and in the first of 
these he gives a compact summary of his mode of investiga- 
tion, from which the following passages are extracted. It 
must be remembered that at the time he commenced the in- 
quiry he was in the prime and vigor of intellectual life, being 
fifty-two years of age : 

"It was in January, 1851, that I first began my investiga- 
tions, and it was not until. April, 1853, that I became a firm 
believer in the reality of spiritual intercourse. During twen- 
ty-three months of those twenty-seven, I witnessed several 
hundred manifestations in various forms. I kept very minute 
and careful records of many of them. My practice was, 
whenever I attended a circle, to keep in pencil a memoran- 
dum of all that took place, so far as I could, and, as soon as I 
returned home, to write out a full account of what I had wit- 



26 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SFIEITUALISM. 

nessed. I did all this with as much minuteness and particu- 
larity as I had ever kept any record of a trial before me in 
court. In this way, during that period, I preserved the record 
of nearly two hundred interviews, running through some one 
thousand six hundred pages of manuscript. I had these in- 
ter views with many different mediums, and under an infinite 
variety of circumstances. No two interviews were alike. 
There was always something new, or something different from 
what had previously occurred ; and it very seldom happened 
that only the same persons were present. The manifestations 
were of almost every known form, physical or mental ; some- 
times only one, and sometimes both combined. 

"I resorted to every expedient I could devise to detect im- 
posture and to guard against delusion. I felt in myself, and 
saw in others, how exciting was the idea that we were act- 
ually communing with the dead ; and I labored to prevent 
any undue bias of my judgment. I was at times critical and 
captious to an unreasonable extreme ; and when my belief 
was challenged, as it was over and over again, I refused to 
yield, except to evidence that would leave no possible room 
for cavil. 

"I was severely exacting in my demands, and this would fre- 
quently happen. I would go to a circle with some doubt on 
my mind as to the manifestations at the previous circle, and 
something would happen aimed directly at that doubt, and 
completely overthrowing it as it then seemed, so that I had 
no longer any reason to doubt. But I would go home and 
write out carefully my minutes of the evening, cogitate over 
them for several days, compare them with previous records, 
and finally find some loophole— some possibility that it might 
have been something else than spiritual influence, and 1 would 
go to the next circle with a new doubt, and a new set of 
queries. 

"I look back sometimes now, with a smile, at the. ingenuity 
I wasted in devising ways and means to avoid the possibility 
of deception. 

' ' It was a remarkable feature of my investigations that every 
conceivable objection I could raise was, first or last, met and 
answered." 

The following extracts are from the "Appeal" : 

"I have seen a mahogany table, having a centre leg, and 
with a lamp burning upon it, lifted from the floor at least a 
foot, in spite of the efforts of those present, and shaken back- 
ward and forward as one would shake a goblet in his hand, 
and the lamp retain its place, though its glass pendants rang 
again. 

' ' I have known a mahogany chair thrown on its side and 
moved swiftly back and forth on the floor, no one touching it, 
through a room where there were at least a dozen people sit- 
ting, yet no one was touched ; and it was repeatedly stopped 
within a few inches of me, when it was coming with a vio- 
lence which, if not arrested, must have broken my legs." 

Having satisfied himself of the reality of the physical phe« 



A DEFENCE OP MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 27 

nomena, lie came to the question of whence comes the intel- 
ligence that was so remarkably connected with them. He 
says: 

" Preparatory to meeting a circle, I have sat clown alone in 
my room, and carefully prepared a series of questions to be 
propounded, and I have been surprised to find my questions 
answered, and in the precise order in which I wrote them, 
without my even taking my memorandum out of my pock- 
et, and when not a person present knew that I had pre- 
pared questions, much less what they were. My most se- 
cret thoughts, those which I have never uttered to mortal 
man or woman, have been freely spoken to as if I had uttered 
them ; and I have been admonished that my every thought 
was known to, and could be disclosed by, the intelligence 
which was thus manifesting itself. 

"Still the question occurred, ' May not all this have been, 
by some mysterious operation, the mere reflex of the mind of 
some one present ? ' The answer was, that facts were com- 
municated which were unknown then, but afterwards found 
to be true ; like this, for instance : when I was absent last 
winter in Central America, my friends in town heard of my 
whereabouts and of the state of my health several times ; and 
on my return, by comparing their information with the en- 
tries in my journal, it was found to be invariably correct. 
So thoughts have been uttered on subjects not then in my 
mind and utterly at variance, with my own notions. This 
has often happened to me and to other's, so as fully to estab- 
lish the fact that it was not our minds that gave forth or af- 
fected the communication." 

These few extracts sufficiently show that the writer was 
aware of the possible sources of error in such an inquiry ; 
and the details given in the letters prove that he was con- 
stantly on his guard against them. He himself and his 
daughter became mediums ; so that he afterwards obtained 
personal confirmation of many of the phenomena by himself 
alone. But all the phenomena referred to in the letters and 
"Appeal" occurred to him in the presence of others, who 
testified to them as well, and thus removed the possibility 
that the phenomena were subjective. 

We have yet to add a notice of what will be perhaps, to 
many persons, the most startling and convincing of all the 
Judge's experiences. His own daughter became a medium 
for speaking foreign languages of which she was totally ig- 
norant. He says : "She knows no language but her own, 
and a little smattering of boarding-school French ; yet she 
has spoken in nine or ten different tongues, often for an hour 
at a time, with the ease and fluency of a native. It is not un- 
frequent that foreigners converse with their spirit-friends 



28 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

through her in their own language." One of these cases 
must be given : 

"One evening, when some twelve or fifteen persons were 
in my parlor, Mr. E. D. Green, an artist of this city, was 
shown in, accompanied by a gentleman whom he introduced 
as Mr. Evangelides, of Greece. Ere long a spirit spoke to 
him through Laura, in English, and said so many things to 
him that he identified him as a friend who had died at his 
house a few years before, but of whom none of us had ever 
heard. Occasionally, through Laura, the spirit would speak 
a word or a sentence in Greek, until Mr. E. inquired if he 
could be understood if he spoke Greek? The residue of 
the conversation for more than an hour was, on his part, 
entirely in Greek, and on hers sometimes in Greek and 
sometimes in English. At times Laura would not under- 
stand what was the idea conveyed either by her or him. 
At other times she would understand him, though he spoke 
in Greek, and herself while uttering Greek words." 

Several other cases are mentioned, and it is stated that this 
Jady has spoken Spanish, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, 
Latin, Hungarian and Indian ; and other languages which 
were unknown to any person present. 

This is by no means an isolated case, but it is given as be- 
ing on most unexceptionable authority. A man must know 
whether his own daughter has learnt, so as to speak fluently, 
eight languages besides her own, or not. Those who carry 
on the conversation must know whether the language is 
spoken or not ; and in several cases — as the Latin, Spanish, 
and Indian— the Judge himself understood the language. 
And the phenomenon is connected with Spiritualism by the 
speaking being in the name of, and purporting to come from, 
some deceased person, and the .subject matter being charac- 
teristic of that person. Such a case as this, which has been 
published sixteen years, ought to have been noticed and ex- 
plained by those who profess to enlighten the public on the 
subject of Spiritualism. 

Our next example is one of the most recent, but at the same 
time one of the most useful, converts to the truths of Spiritu- 
alism. Dr. George Sexton, M. D., M. A., L.L. D., was for 
many years the coadjutor of Mr. Bradlaugh, and one of the 
most earnest and energetic of the secularist teachers. The 
celebrated Robert Owen first called his attention to the sub- 
ject of Spiritualism about twenty years ago. He read books, 
lie saw a good deal of the ordinary physical manifestations, 
but he always "suspected that the mediums played tricks, 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 29 

and that the whole affair was nothing but clever conjuring 
by means of concealed machinery." He gave several lectures 
against Spiritualism in the usual style of non-believers, 
dwelling much on the absurdity and triviality of the phenom- 
ena, andridiculing the idea that they were the work of spirits. 
Then came another old friend and fellow-secularist, Mr. Tur- 
ley, who, after investigating the subject for the purpose of 
exposing it, became a firm believer. Dr. Sexton laughed at 
this conversion, yet it made a deep impression on his mind. 
Ten years passed away, and his next important investiga- 
tion was with the Davenport brothers ; and it will be well for 
those who sneer at these much- abused young men to take 
note of the following account of Dr. Sexton's proceedings 
with them, and especially of the fact that they cheerfully sub- 
mitted to every test the doctor suggested. He tells us (in 
his lecture, "Howl became a Spiritualist,") that he visited 
them again and again, trying in vain to find out the trick. 
Then, he says — 

"My partner— Dr. Barker— and I invited the Brothers to 
our houses, and, in order to guard against anything like 
trickery, we requested them not to bring any ropes, instru- 
ments, or other apparatus ; all these we ourselves had deter- 
mined to supply. Moreover, as there were four of them, viz., 
the two Brothers Davenport, Mr. Fay, and Dr. Ferguson, 
we suspected that the two who were not tied might really do 
all that was done. We therefore requested only two to come. 
They unhesitatingly complied with all these requests. 

" We formed a circle, consisting entirely of members of our 
own families and a few private friends, with the one bare 
exception of Mrs. Fay. In the circle we all joined hands, 
and as Mrs. Fay sat at one end she had one of her hands 
free, while I had hold of the other. Thinking that she might 
be able to assist with the hand that was thus free, I asked, as 
a favor, that I might be allowed to hold both her hands— a 
proposition which she at once agreed to. Now, without en- 
tering here at all into what took place, suffice it to 'say that 
we bound the mediums with our own ropes, placed their feet 
upon sheets of writing paper, and drew lines around their 
boots, so that if they moved their feet it should be impossible 
for them to place them again in the same position ; we laid 
pence on their toes, sealed the ropes, and in every way took 
precautions against their moving. On the occasion to which 
I now refer, Mr. Bradlaugh and Mr. Charles Watts were pres- 
ent ; and when Mr. Fay's coat had been taken off, the ropes 
still remaining on his hands, Mr. Bradlaugh requested that 
his coat might be placed on Mr. Fay, which was immediately 
done, the ropes still remaining fastened. We got, on this oc- 
casion, all the phenomena that usually occurred in the pres- 
ence of these extraordinary men, particulars of which I shall 
probably give on another occasion. Dr. Barker became a be- 



30 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIEITUALISM. 

liever in Spiritualism from the time that the Brothers visited 
at his house. I did not see that any proof had been given 
that disembodied spirits had any hand in producing the phe- 
nomena ; but I was convinced that no tricks had been played, 
and that, therefore, these extraordinary physical manifesta- 
tions were the result of some occult force in Nature which I 
had no means of explaining in the present state of my knowl- 
edge. All the physical phenomena that I had seen now be- 
came clear to me ; they were not accomplished by trickery, as 
I had formerly supposed, but were the result of some undis- 
covered law of Nature, which it was the business of the man 
of science to use his utmost endeavors to discover." 

While he was maintaining this ground, Spiritualists often 
asked him how he explained the intelligence that was mani- 
fested ; and he invariably replied that he had not yet seen 
proofs of any intelligence other than what might be that of 
the medium or of some other persons present in the circle, 
adding, that as soon as he did see proofs of such intelligence 
he should become a Spiritualist. In this position he stood for 
many years, till he naturally believed he should never see 
cause to change his opinion. He continued the inquiry, how- 
ever, and in 1865 began to hold seances at home ; but it was 
years before any mental phenomena occurred which were ab- 
solutely conclusive, although they were often of so startling 
a nature as would have satisfied any one less skeptical. At 
length, after fifteen years of enlightened skepticism— a skep- 
ticism not founded upon ignorance, but which refused to go 
one step beyond what the facts so diligently pursued abso- 
lutely demonstrated— the needful evidence came : 

"The proofs that I did ultimately receive are, many of 
them, of a character that I cannot describe minutely to a 
public audience, nor indeed have I time to do so. Suffice it 
to say, that I got in my own house, in the absence of all me- 
dium's other than those members of my own family and inti- 
mate private friends in whom mediumistic powers became 
developed, evidence of an irresistible character that the com- 
munications came from deceased friends and relatives. In- 
telligence was again and again displayed which could not 
possibly have had any other origin than that which it pro- 
fessed to have. Facts were named known to no one in the 
circle, and left to be verified afterwards. The identity of the 
spirits communicating was proved in a hundred different 
ways. Our dear departed ones made themselves palpable 
both to feeling and to sight ; and the doctrine of spirit- com- 
munion was proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. I soon 
found myself in the position of Dr. Fenwick in Lord Lyt- 
ton's ' Strange Story.' ' Do you believe,' asked the female at- 
tendant of Margrave, 'in that which you seek?' 'I have 
no belief,' was the answer. 'True science has none; true 
science questions all things, and takes nothing on credit. It 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 31 

knows but three states of mind— denial, conviction, and the 
vast interval between the two, which is not belief, but the 
suspension of judgment.' This describes exactly the phases 
through which my mind has passed." 

Since Dr. Sexton has become a Spiritualist he has been as 
energetic an advocate for its truths as he had been before for 
the negations of secularism. His experience and ability as a 
lecturer, with his long schooling in every form of manifesta- 
tion, render him one of the most valuable promulgators of its 
teachings. He has also done excellent service in exposing 
the pretensions of those conjurers who profess to expose 
Spiritualism. This he does in the most practical way, not 
only by explaining how the professed imitations of spiritual 
manifestations are performed, but by actually performing 
them before his audience ; and at the same time pointing out 
the important differences between what these people do and 
what occurs at good seances. Any one who wishes to com- 
prehend how Dr. Lynn, Messrs. Maskelyne and Cook, and 
Herr Dobler perform some of their most curious feats have 
only to read his lecture, entitled, " Spirit Mediums and Con- 
jurers," before going to witness their entertainments. We 
can hardly believe that the man who does this, and who dur- 
ing fifteen years of observation and experiment held out 
against the spiritual theory, is one of those who, as Lord Am- 
berley tells us, "fall a victim to the most patent frauds, and 
are imposed upon by jugglery of the most vulgar order "; or 
who, as viewed from Prof. Tynclall's high scientific stand- 
point, are in a frame of mind before which science is utterly 
powerless— " dupes beyond the reach of proof , who like to 
believe and do not like to be undeceived." These be brave 
words ; but we leave our readers to judge whether they come 
with a very good grace from men who have the most slender 
and inadequate knowledge of the subject they are criticising, 
and no knowledge at all of the long- continued and conscien- 
tious investigations of many who are included in their whole- 
sale animadversions. 

Yet one more witness to these marvelous phenomena we 
must bring before our readers — a trained and experienced 
physicist, who has experimented in his own laboratory, and 
has applied tests and measurements of the most rigid and con- 
clusive character. When Mr. Crookes— the discoverer of the 
metal thallium, and a Fellow of the Eoyal Society— first an- 
nounced that he was going to investigate so-called spiritual 



32 A DEFENCE OF MODEBN SPIEITUALISM. 

phenomena, many public writers were all approval ; for the 
complaint had long been that men of science were not per- 
mitted by mediums to inquire too scrupulously into the facts. 
One expressed "profound satisfaction that the subject was 
about to be investigated by a man so well qualified"; an- 
other was "gratified to learn that the matter is now receiving 
the attention of cool and clear headed men of recognized po- 
sition in science"; while a third declared that "no- one could 
doubt Mr. Crookes's ability to conduct the investigation with 
rigid philosophical impartiality. ' ' But these expressions were 
evidently insincere, and were only meant to apply in case 
the result was in accordance with the writers' notions of what 
it ought to be. Of course, a " scientific investigation " would 
explode the whole thing. Had not Faraday exploded table- 
turning? They hailed Mr. Crookes as the Daniel come to 
judgment— as the prophet who would curse their enemy, 
Spiritualism, by detecting imposture and illusion. But when 
the judge, after a patient trial lasting several years, decided 
against them, and their accepted prophet blessed the hated 
thing as an undoubted truth, their tone changed ; and they 
began to suspect the judge's ability, and to pick holes in the 
evidence on which he founded his judgment. 

In Mr. Crookes's latest paper, published in the Quarterly 
Journal of Science for January last, we are informed that he 
has pursued the inquiry for four years ; and besides attending 
seances elsewhere, has had the opportunity of making nu- 
merous experiments in his own house with the two remark- 
able mediums already referred to, Mr. D. D. Home and Miss 
Kate Fox. These experiments were almost exclusively made 
in the light, under conditions of his own arranging, and with 
his own friends as witnesses. Such phenomena as percussive 
sounds ; alteration of the weight of bodies ; the rising of 
heavy bodies in the air without contact by any one ; the levi- 
tation of human beings ; luminous appearances of various 
kinds ; the appearance of hands which lift small objects, yet 
are not the hands of any one present ; direct writing by a 
luminous detached hand or by the pencil alone ; phantom 
forms and faces ; and various mental phenomena— have all 
been tested so variously and so repeatedly that Mr. Crookes 
is thoroughly satisfied of their objective reality. These phe- 
nomena are given in outline in the paper above referred to, 
and they will be detailed in full in a volume now preparing. 
I will not, therefore, weary my readers by repeating them 
here, but will remark, that these experiments have a weight 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 33 

as evidence vastly greater than would be due to them as rest- 
ing on the testimony of any man of science, however distin- 
guished, because they are, in almost every case, confirmations 
of what previous witnesses in immense numbers have testified 
to, in various places, and under various conditions, during 
the last twenty years. In every other experimental inquiry, 
without exception, confirmation of the facts of an earlier ob- 
server is held to add so greatly to their value, that no one 
treats them with the same incredulity with which he might 
have received them the first time they were announced. And 
when the confirmation has been repeated by three or four in- 
dependent observers under favorable conditions, and there is 
nothing but theory or negative evidence against them, the 
facts are admitted— at least provisionally, and until disproved 
by a greater weight of evidence or by discovering the exact 
source of the fallacy of preceding observers. 

But here, a totally different— a most unreasonable and a 
most unphilosophical — course is pursued. Each fresh obser- 
vation, confirming previous evidence, is treated as though it 
were now put forth for the first time ; and fresh confirmation 
is asked of it. And when this fresh and independent confir- 
mation comes, yet more confirmation is asked for, and so on 
without end. This is a very clever way to ignore and stifle a 
new truth ; but the facts of Spiritualism are ubiquitous in 
their occurrence and of so indisputable a nature, as to compel 
conviction in every earnest inquirer. It thus happens that 
although every fresh convert requires a large proportion of 
the series of demonstrative facts to be reproduced before he 
will give his assent to them, the number of such converts has 
gone on steadily increasing for a quarter of a century. Cler- 
gymen of all sects, literary men and lawyers, physicians in 
large numbers, men of science not a few, secularists, philo- 
sophical skeptics, pure materialists, all have become converts 
through the overwhelming logic of the phenomena which 
Spiritualism has brought before them. And what have we 
per contra ? Neither science nor philosophy, neither skepti- 
cism nor religion, has ever yet in this quarter of a century 
made one single convert from the ranks of Spiritualism ! This 
being the case, and fully appreciating the amount of candor 
and fairness, and knowledge of the subject, that has been ex- 
hibited by their opponents, is it to be wondered at that a large 
proportion of Spiritualists are now profoundly indifferent to 
the opinion of men of science, and would not go one step out 
jf their way to convince them ? They say, that the niove- 
3 



34 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

ment is going on quite fast enough; that it is spreading 
by its own inherent force of truth, and slowly permeating all 
classes of society. It has thriven in spite of abuse and perse- 
cution, ridicule and argument, and will continue to thrive 
whether endorsed by great names or not. Men of science, 
like all others, are welcome to enter its ranks ; but they must 
satisfy themselves by their own persevering researches, not 
expect to have its proofs laid before them. Their rejection of its 
truths is their own loss, but cannot in the slightest degree affect 
the progress of Spiritualism. The attacks and criticisms of 
the press are borne good-humoredly, and seldom excite other 
feelings than pity for the willful ignorance and contempt for 
the overwhelming presumption of their writers. Such are the 
sentiments that are continually expressed by Spiritualists ; 
and it is as well, perhaps, that the outer world, to whom the 
literature of the movement is as much unknown as the Yedas, 
should be made acquainted with them. 

Investigation by the Dialectical Committee. — There are many 
other investigators who ought to be noticed in any complete 
sketch of the subject, but we have now only space to allude 
briefly to the " Report of the Committee of the Dialectical 
Society." Of this committee, consisting of thirty-three act- 
ing members, only eight were, at the commencement, believ- 
ers in the reality of the phenomena, while not more than four 
accepted the spiritual theory. During the course of the in- 
quiry at least twelve of the complete skeptics became con- 
vinced of the reality of many of the physical phenomena 
through attending the experimental sub-committees, and al- 
most wholly by means of the mediumship of members of the 
committee. At least three members who were previously 
skeptics pursued their investigations outside the committee 
meetings, and in consequence have become thorough Spirit- 
ualists. My own observation as a member of the committee 
and of the largest and most active sub -committee, enables me 
to state that the degree of conviction produced in the minds 
of the various members was, allowing for marked differences 
of character, approximately proportionate to the amount of 
time and care bestowed on the investigation. This fact, 
which is what occurs in all investigation into these phenome- 
na, is a characteristic result of the examination into any 
natural phenomena. The examination into an imposture or 
delusion has, invariably, exactly opposite results : those who 
have slender experience being deceived, while those who per- 
se veringly continue the inquiry inevitably find out the source 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 35 

»f the deception or the delusion. If this were not so, the 
discovery of truth and the detection of error would be alike 
impossible. The result of this inquiry on the members of 
the committee themselves is, therefore, of more importance 
than the actual phenomena they witnessed, since these were 
far less striking than many of the facts already mentioned. 
But they are also of importance as confirming, by a body of 
intelligent and unprejudiced men, the results obtained by 
previous individual inquirers. 

Before leaving this report, I must call attention to the evi- 
dence it furnishes of the state of opinion among men of edu- 
cation in France. M. Camille Flammarion, the well-known 
astronomer, sent a communication to the committee which 
deserves special consideration. Besides declaring his own ac- 
ceptance of the objective reality of the phenomena after ten 
years of investigation, he makes the following statement : 

"My learned teacher and friend, M. Babinet, of the Insti- 
tute, who has endeavored, with M. E. Liais (now Director of 
the Observatory of Brazil), and several others of my col- 
leagues of the Observatory of Paris, to ascertain th^'r nature 
and cause, is not fully convinced of the intervention of 
spirits in their production ; though this hypothesis, by which 
alone certain categories of these phenomena would seem to 
be explicable, has been adopted by many of our most es- 
teemed savants, among others by Dr. Hcehle, the learned au- 
thor of the 'History of Chemistry,' and the 'General Ency- 
clopedia' ; and by the diligent laborer in the field of astro- 
nomic discovery whose death we have recently had to deplore, 
M. Hermann Ooldschmidt, the discoverer of fourteen plan- 
ets." 

It thus appears that in France, as well as in America and 
in this country, men of science of no mean rank have inves- 
tigated these phenomena and have found them to be realities ; 
while some of the most eminent hold the spiritual theory to 
be the only one that will explain them. 

This seems the proper place to notice the astounding asser- 
tion of certain writers, that there is not "a particle of evi- 
dence" to support the spiritual theory; that those who ac- 
cept it betray "hopeless inability to discriminate between 
adequate and inadequate proof of facts" ; that the theory is 
" formed apart from facts" '; and that those who accept it are 
so unable to reason as to "jump to the conclusion" that it 
must be -spirits that move tables, merely because they do not 
know how else they can be moved. The preceding account 
of how converts to Spiritualism have been made is a sufficient 
answer to all this ignorant assertion. The spiritual theory, 



36 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

as a rule, has only been adopted as a last resource, when all 
other theories have hopelessly broken down ; and when fact 
after fact, phenomenon after phenomenon, has presented 
itself, giving direct proof that the so-called dead are still 
alive. The spiritual theory is the logical outcome of the 
whole of the facts. Those who deny it, in every instance 
with which I am acquainted, either from ignorance or disbe- 
lief, leave half the facts out of view. Take the one case 
(out of many almost equally conclusive) of Mr. Livermore, 
who, during five years, on hundreds of occasions, saw, felt 
and heard the movements of the figure of his dead wife in 
absolute, unmistakable, living form— a form which could 
move objects, and which repeatedly wrote to him in her 
own handwriting and her own language, on cards which re- 
mained after the figure had disappeared ; a form which was 
equally visible and tangible to two friends ; which ap- 
peared in his own house, in a room absolutely secured, with 
the presence of only a young girl, the medium. Had these 
three men "not a particle of evidence" for the spiritual theo- 
ry ? Is it, in fact, possible to conceive or suggest any more 
complete proof ? The facts must be got rid of before you can 
abolish the theory ; and simple denial or disbelief does not 
get rid of facts testified during a space of five years by three 
witnesses, all men in responsible positions, and carrying on 
their affairs during the whole period in a manner to win the 
respect and confidence of their fellow-citizens.* 

* The objection will here inevitably be made : l ' These wonderful things 
always happen in America. When they occur in England it will be time 
enough to inquire into them.'" Singularly enough, alter this article was 
in the press the final test was obtained, which demonstrated the occur- 
rence of similar phenomena in London. A short statement may, there- 
fore, be interesting for those who cannot digest American evidence. For 
some years a young lady, Miss Florence Cook, has exhibited remarkabla 
mediumship, which latterly culminated in the production of an entire fe- 
male form purporting to be spiritual, and which appeared baiefooted and 
in white flowing robes while she lay entranced, in dark clothing and se- 
curely bound, in a cabinet or adjacent room. Notwithstanding that tests 
of an apparently conclusive character were employed, many visitors, 
Spiritualists as well as skeptics, got the impression that all was not as it 
sliou'd be; owing, in part, to the resemblance of the supposed spirit to 
Miss Cook, and also to the fact that the two could not be seen at the same 
time. Some supposed that Miss C. was an impostor, who managed to con- 
ceal a white robe about her (although she was often searched), and who, 
although she was securely tied with tapes and sealed, was able to get out 
of her bonds, dress and undress herself, and get into them again, all in 
the dark, and in so complete and skillful a manner as to defy detection. 
Others thought that the spirit released her, provided her with a white 
dress, and sent her forth to personate a ghost. The belief that there was 
something wrong led one gentleman— an ardent Spiritualist— to seize the 
supposed spirit and endeavor to hold it, in the hope that some other person 
would open the cabinet-door and see if Miss Cook was really there. This 
was, unfortunately, not done; but the great resemblance of the being he 
seized to Miss Cook, its perfect solidity, and the vigorous struggles it 
made to escape from him, convinced this gentleman that it was Miss Cook 
nerself, although the rest of the company, a few minutes afterwards, 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 37 



SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHS. 

We now approach a subject which cannot "be omitted in 
any impartial sketch of the evidences of Spiritualism, since it 
is that which furnishes perhaps the most unassailable demon- 
stration it is possible to obtain, of the objective reality of spir- 
itual forms, and also of the truthful nature of the evidence 
furnished by seers when they describe figures visible to them- 
selves alone. It has been already indicated— and it is a fact, 
of which the records of Spiritualism furnish ample proof— 
that different individuals possess the power of seeing such 
forms and figures in very variable degrees. Thus, it often 
happens at a seance, that some will see distinct lights of which 
they will describe the form, appearance and position, while 
others see nothing at all. If only one or two persons see the 
lights, the rest will naturally impute it to their imagination ; 
but there are cases in which only one or two of those present 
are unable to see them. There are also cases in which all see 
them, but in very different degrees of distinctness ; yet that 
they see the same objects is proved by their all agreeing as to 
the position and the movement of the lights. Again, what 
some see as merely luminous clouds, others will see as distinct 

found her bound and sealed just as she had been left an hour before. To 
determine the question conclusively, experiments have been made within 
the last few weeks by two scientific men. Mr. C. F. Varley, F. R. S., the 
eminent electrician, made use of a galvanic battery and cable-testing ap- 
paratus, and passed a current through Miss Cook's body (by fastening 
sovereigns soldered to wires to her arms). The apparatus was so delicate 
that any movement whatever was instantly indicated, while it was im- 
possible for the young lady to dress and act as a ghost without breaking 
the circuit. Yet under these conditions the spirit-form did appear, ex- 
hibited its arms, spoke, wrote, and touched several persons; and this hap- 
pened. ')e it remembered, not in the medium's own house, but in that of 
a private gentleman in the West End of London. For nearly an hour the 
circuit was never broken, and at the conclusion Miss Cook was found in a 
deep trance. Since this remarkable experiment Mr. William Crookes, 
F. R. S., has obtained, if possible, still more satisfactory evidence. He 
contrived a phosphorus lamp, and, armed with this, was allowed to go 
into the dark room accompanied by the spirit, and there saw and felt Miss 
Cook, dressed' in black velvet, lying in a trance on the floor, while the 
spirit-form, in white robes, stood close beside her. During the evening 
this spirit-form had been for nearly an hour walking and talking with the 
company; and Mr. Crookes, by permission, clasped the figure in his arms, 
and found it to be, apparently, a real living woman, just as the skeptical 
gentleman had done. Yet this figure is not that of Miss Cook, nor of any 
other human being, since it appeared and disappeared in Mr. Crookes's 
own house as completely as in that of the medium herself. The full 
statements of Messrs. Varley and Crookes, with a mass of interesting de- 
tail on the subject, appeared in the "Spiritualist" newspaper in March 
and April last; and they serve to show that whatever marvels occur in 
America can be reproduced here, and that men of science are not preclud- 
ed from investigating these phenomena with scientific instruments and 
by scientific methods. In the concluding part of this paper we shall be 
able to show that another class of manitestatation which originated in 
America— that of the so-called spirit-photographs— has been first critical- 
ly examined and completely demonstrated in our own country. 



38 A DEFENCE OF MODEKN SPIEITUALISM. 

human forms, either partial or entire. In other cases all pres- 
ent see the form — whether hand, face, or entire figure— with 
equal distinctness. Again, the objective reality of these ap- 
pearances is sometimes proved by their being touched, or by 
their being seen to move objects— in some cases heard to speak, 
in others seen to write, by several persons at one and the same 
time ; the figure seen or the writing produced being some* 
times unmistakably recognizable as that of some deceased 
friend. A volume could easily be filled with records of this 
class of appearances, authenticated by place, date, and names 
of witnesses ; and a considerable selection is to be found in 
the works of Mr. Eobert Dale Owen. 

Now, at this point, an inquirer, who had not prejudged the 
question, and who did not believe his own knowledge of the 
universe to be so complete as to justify him in rejecting all 
evidence for facts which he had hitherto considered to be in 
the highest degree improbable, might fairly say, "Tour evi- 
dence for the appearance of visible, tangible, spiritual forms, 
is very strong ; but I should like to have them submitted to 
a crucial test, which would quite settle the question of the 
possibility of their being due to a coincident delusion of several 
senses of several persons at the same time ; and, if satisfactory, 
would demonstrate their objective reality in a way nothing else 
can do. If they really reflect or emit light which makes them 
visible to human eyes, they can be photographed. Photograph 
them, and you will have an unanswerable proof that your hu- 
man witnesses are trustworthy." Two years ago we could only 
have replied to this very proper suggestion, that we believed 
it had been done and could be again done, but that we had no 
satisfactory evidence to offer. Now, however, we are in a 
position to state, not only that it has been frequently done, 
but that the evidence is of such a nature as to satisfy any one 
who will take the trouble carefully to examine it. This evi- 
dence we will now lay before our readers, and we venture to 
think they will acknowledge it to be most remarkable. 

Before doing so it may be as well to clear away a popular 
misconception. Mr. Lewes advised the Dialectical Commit- 
tee to distinguish carefully between "facts and inferences 
from facts." This is especially necessary in the case of what 
are called spirit photographs. The figures which occur in 
these, when not produced by any human agency, may be of 
"spiritual" origin, without being figures "of spirits." There 
is much evidence to show that they are, in some cases, forms 
produced by invisible intelligences, but distinct from them. 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 39 

In other cases the intelligence appears to clothe itself with 
matter capable of being perceived by us ; but even then it 
floes not follow that the form produced is the actual image of 
the spiritual form. It may be but a reproduction of the 
former mortal form with its terrestrial accompaniments, for 
purposes of recognition. 

Most persons have heard of these "ghost-pictures," and 
how easily they can be made to order by any photographer, 
and are therefore disposed to think they can be of no use as 
evidence. But a little consideration will show them that the 
means by which sham ghosts can be manufactured being so 
well known to all photographers, it becomes easy to apply 
tests or arrange conditions so as to prevent imposition. The 
following are some of the more obvious : 

1. If a person with a knowledge of photography takes his 
own glass plates, examines the camera used and all the ac- 
cessories, and watches the whole process of taking a picture, 
then, if any definite form appears on the negative besides the 
sitter, it is a proof that some object was present capable of re- 
flecting or emitting the actinic rays, although invisible to 
those present. 2. If an unmistakable likeness appears of a 
deceased person totally unknown to the photographer. 3. If 
figures appear on the negative having a definite relation to 
the figure of the sitter, who chooses his own position, attitude 
and accompaniments, it is a proof that invisible figures were 
really there. 4. If a figure appears draped in white, and part- 
ly behind the dark body of the sitter without in the least 
showing through, it is a proof that the white figure was there 
at the same time, because the dark parts of the negative are 
transparent, and any white picture in any way superposed 
would show through. 5. Even should none of these tests be 
applied, yet if a medium, quite independent of the photogra- 
pher, sees and describes a figure during the sitting and an ex- 
actly corresponding figure appears on the plate, it is a proof 
that such a figure was there. 

Every one of these tests have now been successfully ap- 
plied in our own country, as the following outline of the facts 
wiil show : 

The accounts of spirit- photography in several parts of the 
United States caused many Spiritualists in this country to 
make experiments ; but for a long time without success. Mr. 
and Mrs. Guppy, who are both amateur photographers, tried 
at their own house, and failed. In March, 1872, they went 
one day to Mr. Hudson's, a photographer living near them 



40 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

(not a Spiritualist), to get some cartes de msite of Mrs. Guppy. 
After the sitting the idea suddenly struck Mr. Guppy that he 
would try for a spirit- photograph. He sat down, told Mrs. 
G. to go behind the background, and had a picture taken. 
There came out behind him a large, indefinite, oval white 
patch, somewhat resembling the outline of a draped figure. 
Mrs. Guppy, behind the background, was dressed in black. 

This is the first spirit-photograph taken in England, and it 
iS perhaps more satisfactory on account of the suddenness of 
the impulse under which it was taken, and the great white 
patch which no impostor would have attempted to produce, 
and which, taken by itself, utterly spoils the picture. A few 
days afterwards, Mr. and Mrs. Guppy and their little boy 
went without any notice. Mrs. Guppy sat on the ground 
holding the boy on a stool. Her husband stood behind look- 
ing on. The picture thus produced is most remarkable. A 
tall female figure, finely draped in white, gauzy robes, stands 
directly behind and above the sitters, looking down on them 
and holding its open hands over their heads, as if giving a 
benediction. The face is somewhat Eastern, and, with the 
hands, is beautifully defined. The white robes pass behind 
the sitters' dark figures without in the least showing through. 
A second picture was then taken as soon as a plate could be 
prepared ; and it was fortunate it was so, for it resulted in a 
most remarkable test. Mrs. Guppy again knelt with the boy ; 
but this time she did not stoop so much, and her head was 
higher. The same white figure comes out equally well de- 
fined, but it has changed its position in a manner exactly cor- 
responding to the slight change of Mrs. Chippy' 's position. The 
hands were before on a level ; now one is raised considerably 
higher than the other, so as to keep it about the same distance 
from Mrs. Guppy's head as it was before. The folds of the 
drapery all correspondingly differ, and the head is slightly 
turned. Here, then, one of two things is absolutely certain. 
Either there was a living, intelligent, but invisible being 
present, or Mr. and Mrs. Guppy, the photographer, and some 
fourth person, planned a wicked imposture, and have main- 
tained it ever since. Knowing Mr. and Mrs. Guppy so well 
as I do, I feel an absolute conviction that they are as incapa- 
Dle of an imposture of this kind as any earnest inquirer after 
Gruth in the department of natural science. 

The report of these pictures soon spread. Spiritualists in 
great numbers came to try for similar results, with varying 
degrees of success ; till after a time rumor of imposture arose, 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 41 

and it is now firmly believed by many, from suspicious ap- 
pearances on the pictures and from other circumstances, that a 
large number of shams have been produced. It is certainly 
not to be wondered at if it be so. The photographer, remem- 
ber, was not a Spiritualist, and was utterly puzzled at the 
pictures above described. Scores of persons came to him, 
and he saw that they were satisfied if they got a second fig- 
ure with themselves, and dissatisfied if they did not. He may 
have made arrangements by which to satisfy everybody. One 
thing is clear : that if there has been imposture, it was at 
once detected by Spiritualists themselves ; if not, then Spirit- 
itualists have been quick in noticing what appeared to indi- 
cate it. Those, however, who most strongly assert impos- 
ture, allow that a large number of genuine pictures have been 
taken. But, true or not, the cry of imposture did good, since 
it showed the necessity for tests and for independent con- 
firmation of the facts. 

The test of clearly recognizable likenesses of deceased 
friends has often been obtained. Mr. William Howitt, who 
went without previous notice, obtained likenesses of two 
sons, many years dead, and of the very existence of one of 
which even the friend who accompanied Mr. Howitt was ig- 
norant. The likenesses were instantly recognized by Mrs. 
Howitt; and Mr. Howitt declares them to be "perfect and 
unmistakable." (Spiritual Magazine, Oct., 1872.) Dr. Thom- 
son, of Clifton, obtained a photograph of himself, accompa- 
nied by that of a lady he did not know. He sent it to his 
uncle in Scotland, simply asking if he recognized a resem- 
blance to any of the family deceased. The reply was that it 
was the likeness of Dr. Thomson's own mother, who died at 
his birth ; and there being no picture of her in existence, he 
had no idea what she was like. The uncle very naturally re- 
marked, that he " could not understand how it was done." 
(Spiritual Magazine, Oct., 1873.) Many other instances of 
recognition have occurred, but I will only add my personal 
testimony. A few weeks back I myself went to the same 
photographer's for the first time, and obtained a most unmis- 
takable likeness of a deceased relative. We will now pass to 
a better class of evidence, the private experiments of ama- 
teurs. 

Mr. Thomas Slater, an old-established optician in the Eus- 
ton Road, and an amateur photographer, took with him to 
Mr. Hudson's a new camera of his own manufacture and his 
own glasses, saw everything done, and obtained a portrait 



42 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

with a second figure on it. He then began experimenting in 
his own private house, and during last summer obtained some 
remarkable results. The first of his successes contains two 
heads by the side of a portrait of his sister. One of these 
heads is unmistakably the late Lord Brougham's ; the other, 
much less distinct, is recognized by Mr. Slater as that of Rob- 
ert Owen, whom he knew intimately up to the time of his 
death. He has since obtained several excellent pictures of 
the same class. One in particular shows a female in black 
and white flowing robes, standing by the side of Mr. Slater. 
In another the head and bust appears, leaning over his shoul- 
der. The faces of these two are much alike, and other mem- 
bers of the family recognize them as likenesses of Mr. Sla- 
ter's mother, who died when he was an infant. In another a 
pretty child-figure, also draped, stands beside Mr. Slater's 
little boy. Now, whether these figures are correctly identi- 
fied or not, is not the essential point. The fact that any fig- 
ures, so clear and unmistakably human in appearance as 
these, should appear on plates taken in his own private studio 
by an experienced optician and amateur photographer, who 
makes all his apparatus himself, and with no one present but 
the members of his own family, is the real marvel. In one 
case a second figure appeared on a plate with himself, taken 
by Mr. Slater when he was absolutely alone— by the simple 
process of occupying the sitter's chair after uncapping the 
camera. He and his family being themselves mediums, they 
require no extraneous assistance ; and this may perhaps be 
the reason why he has succeeded so well. One of the most 
extraordinary pictures obtained by Mr. Slater is a full-length 
portrait of his sister, in which there is no second figure, but 
the sitter appears covered all over with a kind of transparent 
lace drapery, which on examination is seen to be wholly made 
up of shaded circles of different sizes, quite unlike any mate- 
rial fabric I have seen or heard of. 

Mr. Slater has himself shown me all these pictures and 
explained the conditions under which ihey were produced. 
That they are not impostures is certain ; and as the first inde- 
pendent confirmations of what had been previously obtained 
only through professional photographers, their value is ines- 
timable. 

A less successful but not perhaps on that account less satis- 
factory confirmation has been obtained by another amateur, 
who, after eighteen months of experiment, obtained a par- 
tial success. Mr. R. Williams, M. A., Ph. D., of Hayward'a 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 43 

Heath, succeeded last summer in obtaining three photo* 
graphs, each with part of a human form besides the sitter, one 
having the features distinctly marked. Subsequently anoth- 
er was obtained, with a well-formed figure of a man standing 
at the side of the sitter, but while being developed, this fig- 
ure faded away entirely. Mr. Williams assures me (in a let- 
ter) that in these experiments there was "no room for trick 
or for the production of these figures by any known means." 

The editor of the British Journal of Photography has made 
experiments at Mr. Hudson's studio, taking his own collodion 
and new plates, and doing everything himself, yet there were 
" abnormal appearances" on the pictures, although no distinct 
figures. 

We now come to the valuable and conclusive experiments 
of Mr. John Beattie, of Clifton, a retired photographer of 
twenty years' experience, and of whom the above-mentioned 
editor says: "Everyone who knows Mr. Beattie will give 
him credit for being a thoughtful, skillful, and intelligent 
photographer, one of the last men in the world to be easily 
deceived, at least in matters relating to photography, and one 
quite incapable of deceiving others." 

Mr. Beattie has been assisted in his researches by Dr. Thom- 
son, an Edinburgh M. D., who has practiced photography, as 
an amateur, for twenty-five years. They experimented at 
the studio of a friend, who was not a Spiritualist (but who 
became a medium during the experiments), and had the ser- 
vices of a tradesman — with whom they were well acquainted 
— as a medium. The whole of the photographic work was 
done by Messrs Beattie and Thomson, the other two sitting 
at a small table. The pictures were taken in series of three, 
within a few seconds of each other, and several of these se- 
ries were taken at each sitting. The figures produced are, 
for the most part, not human, but variously-formed and shad- 
ed white patches, which in successive pictures change their 
form, and develop, as it were, into a more perfect or complete 
type. Thus, one set of five begins with two white somewhat- 
angular patches over the middle sitter, and ends with a rude 
but unmistakable white female figure, covering the larger part 
of the plate. The other three show intermediate states, indi- 
cating a continuous change of form from the first figure to 
the last. Another set (of four pictures) begins with a white 
vertical cylinder over the body of the medium, and a shorter 
one on his head. These change their form in the second and 
third, and in the last become laterally spread out into lumi- 



44 A DEFENCE OF MODEEN SPIRITUALISM. 

nous masses resembling nebulae. Another set of three is very 
curious. The first has an oblique flowing luminous patch 
from the table to the ground ; in the second, this has changed 
to a white serpentine column, ending in a point above the me- 
dium's head ; in the third, the column has become broader 
and somewhat double, with the curve in an opposite direc- 
tion, and with a head-like termination. The change of the 
curvature may have some connection with a change in the po- 
sition of the sitters, which is seen to have taken place be- 
tween the second and the third of this set. There are two 
others, taken, like all the preceding, in 1872, but which the 
medium described during the exposure. The first, he said, 
was a thick white fog ; and the picture came out all shaded 
white, with not a trace of any of the sitters. The other was 
described as a fog with a figure standing in it ; and here a 
white human figure is alone seen in the almost uniform foggy 
surface. During the experiments made in 1873, the medium, 
in every case, minutely and correctly described the appear- 
ances which afterwards came out on the plate. In one there 
is a luminous-rayed star of large size, with a human face 
faintly visible in the centre. This is the last of three in 
which the star developed, and the whole were accurately de- 
scribed by the medium. In another set of three, the medium 
first described " a light behind him, coming from the floor." 
The next, " a light rising over another person's arms, com- 
ing from his own boot." The third, "there is the same light, 
but now a column comes up through the table, and it is hot to 
my hands." Then he suddenly exclaimed, "What a bright 
light up there ! Can you not see it?" pointing to it with his 
hand. All this most accurately describes the three pictures, 
and in the last, the medium's hand is seen pointing to a white 
patch which appears overhead. There are other curious de- 
velopments, the nature of which is already sufficiently indi- 
cated ; but one very startling single picture must be men- 
tioned. During the exposure one medium said he saw on the 
background a black figure, the other medium saw a light fig- 
ure by the side of the black one. In the picture both these 
figures appear, the light one very faintly, the black one much 
more distinctly, of a gigantic size, with a massive coarse- 
featured face and long hair. — {Spiritual Magazine, January 
and August, 1873; Photographic, News, June 28th, 1872.) 

Mr. Beattie has been so good as to send me for examination 
a complete set of these most extraordinary photographs, thir- 
ty-two in number, and has furnished me with any particulars 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 45 

I desired. I have described them as correctly as I am able ; 
and Dr. Thomson has authorized me to use his name as con- 
firming Mr. Beattie's account of the conditions under which 
they appeared. These experiments were not made without 
labor and perseverance. Sometimes twenty consecutive pic- 
tures produced absolutely nothing unusual. Hundreds have 
been taken, and more than half have been complete failures. 
But the successes have been well worth the labor. They 
demonstrate the fact that what a medium or sensitive sees 
(even where no one else sees anything) may often have an 
objective existence. They teach us that perhaps the book- 
seller, Nicolai, of Berlin— whose case has been quoted ad nau- 
seam as the type of a "spectral illusion "—saw real beings 
after all ; and that, had photography been then discovered 
and properly applied, we might now hav^ the portraits of the 
invisible men and women who cr 'iwded his room. They give 
us hints of a process by which the figures seen at seances may 
have to be gradually formed or developed, and enable us bet- 
ter to understand the statements repeatedly made by the 
communicating intelligences, that it is very difficult to pro- 
duce definite, visible and tangible forms, and that it can only 
be done under a rare combination of favorable conditions. 

We find, then, that three amateur photographers, working 
independently in different parts of England, separately con- 
firm the fact of spirit-photography — already demonstrated to 
the satisfaction of many who had tested it through profession- 
al photographers. The experiments of Mr. Beattie and Dr. 
Thomson are alone absolutely conclusive ; and, taken in con- 
nection with those of Mr. Slater and Dr. Williams, and the 
test photographs, like those of Mrs. Guppy, establish as a 
scientific fact the objective existence of invisible human 
forms and definite invisible actinic images. Before leaving 
the photographic phenomena we have to notice two curious 
points in connection with them. The actinic action of the 
spirit-forms is peculiar, and much more rapid than that of 
the light reflected from ordinary material forms ; for the 
figures start out the moment the developing fluid touches 
them, while the figure of the sitter appears much later. Mr. 
Beattie noticed this throughout his experiments, and I was 
myself much struck with it when watching the development 
of three pictures recently taken at Mr. Hudson's. The sec- 
ond figure, though by no means bright, always came out long 
before any other part of the picture. The other singular 
thing is, the copious drapery in which these forms are almost 



46 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

always enveloped, so as to show only just what is necessary 
for recognition of the face and figure. The explanation 
given of this is, that the humari form is more difficult to ma- 
terialize than drapery. The conventional "white- sheeted 
ghost " was not then all fancy, but had a foundation in fact — 
a fact, too, of deep significance, dependent on the laws of a 
yet unknown chemistry. 



SUMMARY OF THE MORE IMPORTANT MANI- 
FESTATIONS, PHYSICAL AND MENTAL. 

As we have not been able to give an account of many curi- 
ous facts which occur with the various classes of mediums, 
the following catalogue of the more important and well-char- 
aetorized phenomena may be useful. They may be grouped 
provisionally, as, Physical, or those in which material objects 
are acted on, or apparently material bodies produced ; and 
Mental, or those which consist in the exhibition, by the me- 
dium, of powers or faculties not possessed in the normal state. 

The principal physical phenomena are the following : 

1. Simple Physical Phenomena.— Producing sounds of all 
kinds, from a delicate tick to blows like those of a heavy 
sledge-hammer. Altering the weight of bodies. Moving 
bodies without human agency. Raising bodies into the air. 
Conveying bodies to a distance out of and into closed rooms. 
Releasing mediums from every description of bonds, even 
from welded iron rings, as has happened in America. 

2. Chemical.— Preserving from the effects of fire, as already 
detailed. 

3. Direct Writing and Drawing.— Producing writing or 
drawing on marked papers, placed in such positions that no 
human hand (or foot) can touch them. Sometimes, visibly 
to the spectators, a pencil rising up and writing or drawing 
apparently by itself. Some of the drawings in many colors 
have been produced on marked paper in from ten to twenty 
seconds, and the colors found wet. (See Mr. Coleman's evi- 
dence in "Dialectical Report," p. 143, confirmed by Lord 
Borthwick, p. 150.) Mr. Thomas Slater, of 136 Euston Road, 
is now obtaining communication in the following manner : A 
bit of slate pencil an eighth of an inch long is laid on a ta- 
ble ; a clean slate is laid over this, in a well-lighted room ; the 
sound of writing is then heard, and in a few minutes a com- 
munication of considerable length is found distinctly written. 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 47 

At other times the slate is held between himself and another 
person, their other hands being joined. Some of these com- 
munications are philosophical discussions on the nature of 
spirit and matter, supporting the usual Spiritual theory on 
this subject. 

4. Musical Phenomena. — Musical instruments, of various 
kinds, played without human agency, from a hand-bell to a 
closed piano. With some mediums, and where the conditions 
are favorable, original musical compositions of a very high 
character are produced. This occurs with Mr. Home. 

5. Spiritual Forms. — These are either luminous appear- 
ances, sparks, stars, globes of light, luminous clouds, &c; or, 
hands, faces, or entire human figures, usually covered with 
flowing drapery, except a portion of the face and hands. The 
human forms are often capable of moving solid objects, and 
are both visible and tangible to all present. In other cases they 
are only visible to seers, but when this is the case it some- 
times happens that the seer describes the figure as lifting a 
flower or a pen, and others present see the flower or the pen 
apparently move by itself. In some cases they speak dis- 
tinctly ; in others the voice is heard by all, the form only 
seen by the medium. The flowing robes of these forms have 
in some cases been examined, and pieces cut off, which have 
in a short time melted away. Flowers are also brought, some 
of which fade away and vanish ; others are real, and can be 
kept indefinitely. It must not be concluded that any of these 
forms are actual spirits ; they are probably only temporary 
forms produced by spirits for purposes of test, or of recogni- 
tion by their friends. This is the account invariably given of 
them by. communications obtained in various ways ; so that 
the objection once thought to be so crushing — that there can 
be no "ghosts" of clothes, armor, or walking-sticks— ceases 
to have any weight. 

6. Spiritual Photographs.— These , as just detailed, demon- 
strate by a purely physical experiment the trustworthiness of 
the preceding class of observations. 

We now come to the mental phenomena, of which the fol- 
lowing are the chief : 

1. Automatic Writing.— -The medium writes involuntarily ; 
often matter which he is not thinking about, does not expect, 
and does not like. Occasionally definite and correct informa- 
tion is given of facts of which the medium has not, nor ever 
had, any knowledge. Sometimes future events are accurate- 
ly predicted. The writing takes place either by the hand or 



48 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

through a planchette. Often the handwriting changes. Some- 
times it is written backwards ; sometimes in languages the 
medium does not understand. 

2. Seeing, or Clairvoyance and Clair audience. —This is of 
various kinds. Some mediums see the forms of deceased per- 
sons unknown to them, and describe their peculiarities so 
minutely that their friends at once recognize them. They 
often hear voices, through which they obtain names, date, 
and place, connected with the individuals so described. Oth- 
ers read sealed letters in any language, and write appropriate 
answers. 

3. 1 "ranee- Speaking. —The medium goes into a more or less 
unconscious state, and then speaks, often on matters and in a 
style far beyond his own capacities. Thus, Serjeant Cox — 
no mean judge on a matter of literary style — says, " I have 
heard an uneducated bar-man, when in a state of trance, 
maintain a dialogue with a party of philosophers on ' Reason 
and Foreknowledge, Will and Fate,' and hold his own against 
them. I have put to him the most difficult questions in psy- 
chology, and received answers, always thoughtful, often full 
of wisdom, and invariably conveyed in choice and elegant 
language. Nevertheless a quarter of an hour afterwards, 
when released from the trance, he was unable to answer the 
simplest query on a philosophical subject, and was even at a 
loss for sufficient language to express a commonplace idea," 
( ' 'What ami?" Vol. II. , p. 242. ) That this is not overstated 
1 can myself testify, from repeated observation of the same 
medium. And from other trance-speakers— such as Mrs. 
Hardinge, Mrs. Tap pan, and Mr. Peebles — I have heard 
discourses which, for high and sustained eloquence, noble 
thoughts, and high moral purpose, surpassed the best efforts 
of any preacher or lecturer within my experience. 

4. Impersonation. — This occurs during trance. The medium 
seems taken possession of by another being; speaks, looks 
and acts the character in a most marvelous manner ; in some 
cases speaks foreign languages never even heard in the nor- 
mal state ; as in the case of Miss Edmonds, already given. 
When the influence is violent or painful, the effects are such 
as have been in all ages imputed to possession by evil spirits. 

5. Healing. — There are various forms of this. Sometimes 
by mere laying on of hands, an exalted form of simple mes- 
meric healing. Sometimes, in the trance state, the medium at 
once discovers the hidden malady, and prescribes for it, often 
describing very exactly the morbid appearance of internal 
organs. 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 49 

The purely mental phenomena are generally of no i;se as 
evidence to non-Spiritualists, except in those few cases where 
rigid tests can be applied ; but they are so intimately con- 
nected with the physical series, and often so interwoven with 
them, that no one who has sufficient experience to satisfy him 
of the reality of the former, fails to see that the latter form 
part of the general system, and are dependent on the same 
agencies. 

With the physical series the case is very different. They 
form a connected body of evidence, from the simplest to the 
most complex and astounding, every single component fact 
of which can be and has been repeatedly demonstrated by 
itself ; while each gives weight and confirmation to all the 
rest. They have all, or nearly all, been before the world for 
twenty years ; the theories and explanations of reviewers and 
critics do not touch them, or in any way satisfy any sane man 
who has repeatedly witnessed them ; they have been tested 
and examined by skeptics of every grade of incredulity, men 
in every way qualified to detect imposture or to discover nat- 
ural causes— trained physicists, medical men, lawyers and 
men of business— but in every case the investigators have 
either retired baffled, or become converts. 

There have, it is true, been some impostors who have at- 
tempted to imitate the phenomena ; but such cases are few in 
number, and have been discovered by tests far less severe 
than those to which the genuine phenomena have been sub- 
mitted over and over again ; and a large proportion of these 
phenomena have never been imitated, because they are be- 
yond successful imitation. 

Now what do our leaders of public opinion say, when a sci- 
entific man of proved ability again observes a large portion 
of* the more extraordinary phenomena, in his own house, un- 
der test conditions, and affirms their objective reality ; and 
this not after a hasty examination, but after four years of re- 
search? Men "with heavy scientific appendages to their 
names " refuse to examine them when in rited ; the eminent 
society of which he is a fellow refuses to record them; and 
the press cries out that if wants better witnesses than Mr. 
Crookes, and that such facts want "confirmation" before 
they can be believed. But why more confirmation? And 
when again "confirmed," who is to confirm the confirmer? 
After the whole range of the phenomena had been before the 
world ten years, and had convinced skeptics b*y tens of thous- 
a ids -skeptics, be it remembered, of common sense and more 
4 



50 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

than common acuteness, Americans of ail classes— they were 
confirmed by the first chemist in America, Professor Eobert 
Hare. Two years later they were again confirmed by the 
elaborate and persevering inquiries of one of the first Amer- 
ican lawyers, Judge Edmonds. Then by another good chem- 
ist, Professor Mapes. In France the truth of the simpler 
physical phenomena was confirmed by Count A. de Gasparin, 
in 1854 ; and since then French astronomers, mathematicians 
and chemists of high rank have confirmed them. Professor 
Thury of Geneva again confirmed them, in 1855. In our own 
country such men as Professor de Morgan, Dr. Lockhart Rob- 
ertson, T. Adolphus Trollope, Dr. Robert Chambers, Serjeant 
Cox, Mr. C. F. Varley, as well as the skeptical Dialectical 
Committee, have independently confirmed large portions of 
them ; and lastly comes Mr. William Crookes, F.R.S., with 
four years of research and unrestricted experiment with the 
two oldest and most remarkable mediums in the world, and 
again confirms almost the whole series ! But even this is not 
all. Through an independent set of most competent observ- 
ers we have the crucial test of photography ; a witness which 
cannot be deceived, which has no preconceived opinions, 
which cannot register " subjective" impressions ; a thorough- 
ly scientific witness, who is admitted into our law courts, and 
whose testimony is good as against any number of recollec- 
tions of what did happen or opinions as to what ought to and 
must have happened. And what have the other side brought 
against this overwhelming array of consistent and unim- 
peachable evidence ? They have merely made absurd and in- 
adequate suppositions, but have not disproved or explained 
away one weighty fact ! 

My position, therefore, is, that the phenomena of Spiritual- 
ism in their entirety do not require further confirmation. 
They are proved quite as well as any facts are proved in 
other sciences ; and it is not denial or quibbling that can 
disprove any of them, but only fresh facts and accurate de- 
ductions from those facts. When the opponents of Spiritual- 
ism can give a record of their researches approaching in du- 
ration and completeness to those of its advocates ; and when 
they can discover and show in detail, either how the phenom- 
ena are produced or how the many sane and able men here 
referred to have been deluded into a coincident belief that 
they have witnessed them : and when they can prove the cor- 
rectness of their theory by producing a like belief in a body 
of equally sane and able unbelievers— then, and not till then, 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 51 

will it be necessary for Spiritualists to produce fresh con- 
firmation of facts which are, and always have been, sufficient- 
ly real and indisputable to satisfy any honest and persevering 
inquirer. 

This being the state of the case as regards evidence and 
proof, we are fully justified in taking the facts of Modern 
Spiritualism (and with them the spiritual theory as the only 
tenable one) as being fully established. It only remains to 
give a brief account of the more important uses and teachings 
of Spiritualism. 



HISTORICAL TEACHINGS OF SPIRITUALISM. 

The lessons which Modern Spiritualism teaches may be 
classed under two heads. In the first place, we find that it 
gives a rational account of various phenomena in human his- 
tory which physical science has been unable to explain, and 
has therefore rejected or ignored ; and, in the second, we derive 
from it some definite information as to man's nature and des- 
tiny, and, founded on this, an ethical system of great practical 
efficacy. The following are some of the more important phe* 
nomena of history and of human nature which science cannot 
deal with, but which Spiritualism explains : 

1. It is no small thing that the Spiritualist finds himself 
able to rehabilitate Socrates as a sane man, and his " demon " 
as an intelligent spiritual being who accompanied him through 
life— in other words, a guardian spirit. The non-Spiritualist 
is obliged to look upon one of the greatest men in human his- 
tory, not only as subject all his life to a mental illusion, but 
as being so weak, foolish, or superstitious as never to discov- 
er that it was an illusion. He is obliged to disbelieve the fact 
asserted by contemporaries and by Socrates himself, that it 
forewarned him truly of dangers ; and to hold that this noble 
man, this subtle reasoner, this religious skeptic, who was 
looked up to with veneration and love by the great men who 
were his pupils, was imposed upon by his own fancies, and 
never during a long life found out that they were fancies, and 
that their supposed monitions were as often wrong as right. 
It is a positive mental relief not to have to think thus of Soc- 
rates. 

2. Spiritualism allows us to believe that the oracles of an- 
tiquity were not all impostures ; that a whole people, perhaps 
the most intellectually acute who ever existed, were not all 



52 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

dupes. In discussing the question, "Why the Prophetess 
Pythia giveth no Answers now from the Oracle in Verse," 
Plutarch tells us that when kings and states consulted the 
oracle on weighty matters that might do harm if made public, 
the replies were couched in enigmatical language ; but when 
private persons asked about their own affairs they got direct 
answers in the plainest terms, so that some people even com- 
plained of their simplicity and directness, as being unworthy 
of a divine origin. And he adds this positive testimony : 
"Her answers, though submitted to the severest scrutiny, 
have never proved false or incorrect. On the contrary, the 
verification of them has filled the temple with gifts from all 
parts of Greece and foreign countries." And again, "The 
answer of Pythoness proceeds to the very truth, without any 
diversion, circuit, fraud, or ambiguity. It has never yet, in 
a single instance, been convicted of falsehood." Would such 
statements be made by such a writer, if these oracles were all 
the mere guesses of impostors ? The fact that they declined 
and ultimately failed, is wholly in their favor ; for why should 
imposture cease as the world became less enlightened and 
more superstitious? Neither does the fact that the priests 
could sometimes be bribed to give out false oracles prove any- 
thing, against such statements as that of Plutarch and the be- 
lief during many generations, supported by ever-recurring 
experiences, of the greatest men of antiquity. That belief 
could only have been formed by demonstrative facts ; and 
Modern Spiritualism enables us to understand the nature of 
those facts. 

3. Both the Old and New Testaments are full of Spiritual- 
ism, and Spiritualists alone can read the record with an en- 
lightened belief. The hand that wrote upon the wall at Bel- 
shazzar's feast, and the three men unhurt in Nebuchadnez- 
zar's fiery furnace, are for them actual facts which they need 
not explain away. St. Paul's language about "spiritual 
gifts," and "trying the spirits," is to them intelligible lan- 
guage, and the "gift of tongues " a simple fact. When Christ 
cast out " devils" or evil spirits, he really did so— not merely 
startle a madman into momentary quiescence ; and the water 
changed into wine, as well as the bread and fishes continually 
renewed till five thousand men were fed, are credible as ex- 
treme manifestations of a power which is still daily at work 
among us. 

4. The miracles of the saints, when well attested, come 
into the same category. Those of St. Bernard, for instance, 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 53 

were often performed in broad day before thousands of spec- 
tators, and were recorded by eye-witnesses. He was himself 
greatly troubled by them, wondering why this power was be- 
stowed upon him, and fearing lest it should make him less 
humble. This was not the frame of mind, nor was St. Ber- 
nard's the character, of a deluded enthusiast. The Spiritual- 
ist need not believe that all this never happened ; or that St. 
Francis d'Assisi and St. Theresa were not raised into the air, 
as eye-witnesses declared they were. 

5. Witchcraft and witchcraft trials have a new interest for 
the Spiritualist. He is able to detect hundreds of curious and 
minute coincidences with phenomena he has himself witness- 
ed ; he is able to separate the facts from the absurd inferences 
which people imbued with the frightful superstition of diabo- 
lism drew from them, and from which false inferences all the 
horrors of the witchcraft mania arose. Spiritualism, and 
Spiritualism alone, gives a rational explanation of witchcraft, 
and determines how much of it was objective fact, how much 
subjective illusion. 

6. Modern Roman Catholic miracles become intelligible 
facts. Spirits whose affections and passions are strongly excit- 
ed in favor of Catholicism, produce those appearances of the 
Virgin and of saints which they know will tend to increased 
religious fervor. The appearance itself may be an objective 
reality ; while it is only an inference that it is the Virgin Mary 
—an inference which every intelligent Spiritualist would re- 
pudiate as in the highest degree improbable. 

7. Second-sight, and many of the so-called superstitions of 
savages, may be realities. It is well known that medium- 
istic power is more frequent and more energetic in moun- 
tainous countries ; and as these are generally inhabited by 
the less civilized races, the beliefs that are more prevalent 
there may be due to facts which are more prevalent, and be 
wrongly imputed to the coincident ignorance. It is known 
to Spiritualists that the pure dry air of California led to more 
powerful and more startling manifestations than in any other 
part of the United States. 

8. The recently-discussed question of the efficacy of prayer 
receives a perfect solution by Spiritualism. Prayer may 
be often answered, though not directly, by the Deity. Nor 
does the answer depend wholly on the morality or the religion 
of the petitioner ; but as men who are both moral and reli- 
gious, and are firm believers in a divine response to prayer, 
will pray more frequently, more earnestly and more disinter* 



64 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPiKlTUALISM. 

estedly, they will attract toward them a number of spiritual 
beings who sympathize with them, and who, when the neces- 
sary mediumistic power is present, will be able, as they are 
often willing, to answer the prayer. A striking case is that of 
George Miiller, of Bristol, who has now for forty-four years 
depended wholly for his own support, and that of his won- 
derful charities, on answer to prayer. His "Narrative of 
Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Miiller" (6th Ed., 
1860), should have been referred to in the late discussion, 
since it furnishes a better demonstration that prayer is some- 
times really answered, than the hospital experiment proposed 
by Sir Henry Thomson could possibly have done. In this 
work we have a precise yearly statement of his receipts and 
expenditures for many years. He never asked any one or al- 
lowed any one to be asked, directly or indirectly, for a pen- 
ny. No subscriptions or collections were ever made ; yet 
from 1830 (when he married without any income whatever) 
he has lived, brought up a family, and established institutions 
which have steadily increased, till now four thousand orphan 
children are educated and in part supported. It has happen- 
ed hundreds of times that there has been no food in his house 
and no money to buy any, or no food or milk or sugar for the 
children ; yet he never took a loaf or any other article on 
credit even for a day ; and during the thirty years over which 
his narrative extends, neither he nor the hundreds of chil- 
dren dependent upon him for their daily food have ever been 
without a regular meal ! They have lived, literally, from 
hand to mouth ; and his one and only resource has been se- 
cret prayer. Here is a case which has been going on in the 
midst of us for forty years, and is still going on ; it has been 
published to the world for many years, yet a warm discussion 
is carried on by eminent men as to the fact of whether prayer 
is or is not answered, and not one of them exhibits the 
least knowledge of this most pertinent and illustrative phe- 
nomenon ! The Spiritualist explains all this as a personal in- 
fluence. The perfect simplicity, faith, boundless charity and 
goodness of George Miiller, have enlisted in his cause beings 
of a like nature ; and his mediumistic powers have enabled 
them to work for him by influencing others to send him mon- 
ey, food, clothes, &c, all arriving, as we should say, just in 
the nick of time. The numerous letters he received with 
these gifts, describing the sudden and uncontrollable impulse 
the donors felt to send him a certain definite sum at a certain 
fixed time— such being the exact sum he was in want of and 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 55 

had prayed for— strikingly illustrates the nature of the power 
at work. All this might be explained away, if it were par- 
tial and discontinuous ; but when it continued to supply the 
daily wants of a life of unexampled charity, for which no pro~ 
vision in advance was ever made (for that Miiller considered 
would show want of trust in God), no such explanation can 
cover the facts. 

9. Spiritualism enables us to comprehend and find a place 
for that long series of disturbances and occult phenomena of 
various kinds, which occurred previous to what are termed 
the Modern Spiritual Manifestations. Robert Dale Owen's 
works give a rather full account of this class of phenomena, 
which are most accurately recorded and philosophically treat- 
ed by him. This is not the place to refer to them in detail ; 
but one of them may be mentioned as showing how large 
an amount of unexplained mystery there was, even in our 
own country, before the world heard anything of Modern 
Spiritualism. In 1841, Major Edward Moor, F. R. S., pub- 
lished a little book called " Dealings Bells," giving an account 
of mysterious bell-ringing in his house at Great Dealings, 
Suffolk, and which continued for fifty-three days. Every at- 
tempt to discover the cause, by himself, friends, and bell- 
hangers, were . fruitless ; and by no efforts, however violent, 
could the same clamorous and rapid ringing be produced. 
He wrote an account to the newspapers, requesting informa- 
tion bearing on the subject, when, in addition to certain wise 
suggestions— of rats or a monkey as efficient causes — he re- 
ceived fourteen communications, all relating cases of myste- 
rious bell- ringing in different parts of England, many of 
them lasting much longer than Major Moor's, and all remain- 
ing equally unexplained. One lasted eighteen months ; an- 
other was in Greenwich Hospital, where neither clerk-of-the- 
works, bell-hanger, nor men of science could discover the 
cause. One clergyman wrote of disturbances of a most 
serious kind continued in his parsonage for nine years, and 
he was able to trace back their existence in the same house 
for sixty years. Another case had lasted twenty years, and 
could be traced back for a' century. Some of the details of 
these cases are most instructive. Trick is absolutely the 
most incredible of all explanations. Spiritualism furnishes 
the explanation by means of analogous facts occurring 
every day, and forming part of the great system of phe« 
nomena which demonstrates the spiritual theory. Major 



S6 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

Moor's book is very rare ; but a good abstract of it is given 
in Owen's "Debatable Land," pp. 239-258. 



MORAL TEACHINGS OF SPIRITUALISM. 

We fr*ive now to explain the Theory of Human Nature, 
which is the outcome of the phenomena taken in their entire- 
ty, and is also more or less explicitly taught by the communi- 
cations which purport to come from spirits. It may be briefly 
outlined as follows : 

1. Man is a duality, consisting of an organized spiritual 
form, evolved coincidently with and permeating the physical 
body, and having corresponding organs and developments. 

2. Death is the separation of this duality, and effects no 
change in the spirit, morally or intellectually. 

3. Progressive evolution of the intellectual and moral na- 
ture is the destiny of individuals ; the knowledge, attain- 
ments and experience of earth-life forming the basis of spirit- 
life. 

4. Spirits can communicate through properly-endowed me- 
diums. They are attracted to those they love or sympathize 
with, and strive to warn, protect, and influence them for 
good, by mental impression when they cannot effect any 
more direct communication ; but, as follows from clause (2), 
their communications will be fallible, and must be judged 
and tested just as we do those of our fellow-men. 

The foregoing outline propositions will suggest a number 
of questions and difficulties, for the answers to which readers 
are referred to the works of R. D. Owen, Hudson Tuttle, Pro- 
fessor nare, and the records of Spiritualism passim. Here I 
must pass on to explain with some amount of detail, how the 
theory leads to a pure system of morality with sanctions far 
more powerful and effective than any which either religious 
systems or philosophy have put forth. 

This part of the subject cannot perhaps be better intro- 
duced than by referring to some remarks by Professor Hux- 
ley in a letter to the Committee of the Dialectical Society. 
He says, "But supposing the phenomena to be genuine— 
they do not interest me. If anybody would endow me with 
the faculty of listening to the chatter of old women and cu- 
rates at the nearest cathedral town, I should decline the priv- 
ilege, having better things to do. And if the folk in the spir- 
itual world do not talk more wisely and sensibly than theii 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 57 

friends report them to do, I put them in the same category." 
This passage, written with the caustic satire in which the 
kind hearted Professor occasionally indulges, can hardly 
mean that if it were proved that men really continued to live 
after the death of the body, that fact would not interest him, 
merely because some of them talked twaddle ? .Many scien- 
tific men deny the spiritual source of the manifestations, on 
the ground that real, genuine spirits might reasonably be ex- 
pected not to indulge in the common- place trivialities which 
do undoubtedly form the staple of ordinary spiritual commu- 
nications. But surely Professor Huxley, as a naturalist and 
philosopher, would not admit this to be a reasonable expecta- 
tion. Does he not hold the doctrine that there can be no ef- 
fect, mental or physical, without an adequate cause ? and 
that mental states, faculties, and idiosyncrasies, that are the 
result of gradual development and life-long— or even ances- 
tral—habit, cannot be suddenly changed by any known or 
imaginable cause ? And if (as the Professor would probably 
admit) a very large majority of those who daily depart this 
life are persons addicted to twaddle, persons who spend much 
of their time in low or trivial pursuits, persons whose pleas- 
ures are sensual rather than intellectual— whence is to come 
the transforming power which is suddenly, at the mere 
throwing off the physical body, to change these into beings 
able to appreciate and delight in high and intellectual pur- 
suits ? The thing would be a miracle, the greatest of mira- 
cles, and surely Professor Huxley is the last man to contem- 
plate innumerable miracles as part of the order of nature ; 
and all for what ? Merely to save these people from the neces- 
sary consequences of their misspent lives. For the essential 
teaching of Spiritualism is, that we are, all of us, in every act 
and thought, helping to build up a "mental fabric," which 
will be and constitute ourselves, more completely after the 
death of the body than it does now. Just as this fabric is 
well or ill built, so will our progress and happiness be aided 
or retarded. Just in proportion as we have developed our 
higher intellectual and moral nature, or starved it by disuse 
and by giving undue prominence to those faculties which se- 
cure us mere physical or selfish enjoyment, shall we be well, 
or ill fitted for the new life we enter on. The noble teaching 
of Herbert Spencer, that men are best educated by being left 
to suffer the natural consequences of their actions, is the 
teaching of Spiritualism as regards the transition to another 
phase of life. There will be no imposed rewards or punish- 



53 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

ments ; but every one will suffer the natural and inevitable 
consequences of a well or ill-spent life. The well- spent life 
is that in which those faculties which regard our personal 
physical well-being are subordinated to those which regard 
our social and intellectual well-being, aud the well-being of 
others ; and that inherent feeling— which is so universal and 
so difficult to account for— that these latter constitute our 
higher nature, seems also to point to the conclusion that we 
are intended for a condition in which the former will be al- 
most wholly unnecessary, and will gradually become rudi- 
mentary through disuse, while the latter will receive a corre- 
sponding development. 

Although, therefore, the twaddle and triviality of so many 
of the communications is not one whit more interesting to 
sensible Spiritualists than it is to Prof. Huxley, and is never 
voluntarily listened to, yet the fact that such poor stuff is 
talked (supposing it to come from spirits) is both a fact that 
might have been anticipated and a lesson of deep import. 
We must remember, too, the character of the seances at 
which these commonplace communications are received. A 
miscellaneous assemblance of believers of various grades and 
tastes, but mostly in search of an evening's amusement, and 
of skeptics who look upon all the others as either fools or 
knaves, is not likely to attract to itself the more elevated and 
refined denizens of the higher spheres, who may well be sup- 
posed to feel too much interest in their own new and grand 
intellectual existence to waste their energies on either class. 
If the fact is proved, that people continue to talk after they 
are dead with just as little sense as when alive, but that, be- 
ing in a state in which sense, both common and uncommon, 
is of far greater importance to happiness than it is here 
(where fools pass very comfortable lives), they suffer the 
penalty of having neglected to cultivate their minds ; and 
being so much out of their element in a world where all pleas- 
ures are mental, they endeavor to recall old times by gossip- 
ing with their former associates whenever they can find the 
means— Prof . Huxley will not fail to see its vast importance 
as an incentive to that higher education which he is never 
weary of advocating, ne would assuredly be interested in 
anything having a really practical bearing on the present as 
well as on the future condition of men ; and it is evident that 
even these low and despised phenomena of Spiritualism, "if 
true," have this bearing, and, combined with its higher teacn- 
ings, constitute a great moral agency which may yet regen 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM, 59 

erate the world. For the Spiritualist who, by daily experi- 
ence, gets absolute knowledge of these facts regarding the 
future state — w*ao knows that, just in proportion as he in- 
dulges in passion, or selfishness, or the exclusive pursuit of 
wealth, and neglects to cultivate the affections and the va- 
ried powers of his mind, so does he inevitably prepare for 
himself misery in a world in which there are no physical 
wants to be provided for, no sensual enjoyments except those 
directly associated with the affections and sympathies, no 
occupations but those having for their object social and in- 
tellectual progress — is impelled toward a pure, a sympathetic, 
and an intellectual life by motives far stronger than any 
which either religion or philosophy can supply. He dreads 
to give way to passion or to falsehood, to selfishness or to a 
life of luxurious physical enjoyment, because he knows that 
the natural and inevitable consequences of such habits are 
future misery, necessitating a long and arduous struggle in 
order to develop anew the faculties, whose exercise long dis- 
use has rendered painful to him. He will be deterred from 
crime by the knowledge that its unforeseen consequences 
may cause him ages of remorse ; while the bad passions which 
it encourages will be a perpetual torment to himself in a state 
of being in which mental emotions cannot be laid aside orfor- 
gotten amid the fierce struggles and sensual pleasures of a 
physical existence. It must be remembered that these be- 
liefs (unlike those of theology) will have a living efficacy, 
because they depend on facts occurring again and again in 
the family circle, constantly reiterating the same truths as 
the result of personal knowledge, and thus bringing home to 
the mind, even of the most obtuse, the absolute reality of 
that future existence in which our degree of happiness or 
misery will be directly dependent on the " mental fabric " we 
construct by our daily thoughts and words and actions here. 
Contrast this system of natural and inevitable reward and 
retribution, dependent wholly on the proportionate develop- 
ment of our higher mental and moral nature, with the arbi- 
trary system of rewards and punishments dependent on 
stated acts and beliefs only, as set forth by all dogmatic reli- 
gions, and who can fail to see that the former is in harmony 
with the whole order of Nature— the latter opposed to it. Yet 
it is actually said that Spiritualism is altogether either impos- 
ture or delusion, and all its teachings but the product of " ex- 
pectant attention ' ' and ' ' unconscious cerebration " ! If none 
of the long series of demonstrative facts which have been 



60 A DEFENCE OF MODEEN SPIRITUALISM. 

here sketched out, existed, and its only product were this 
theory of a future state, that alone would negative such a 
supposition. And when it is considered that mediums of all 
grades, whether intelligent or ignorant, and having commu- 
nications given through them in various direct and indirect 
ways, are absolutely in accord as to the main features of this 
theory, what becomes of the gross misstatement that nothing 
is given through mediums but what they know and believe 
themselves ? The mediums have, almost all, been brought 
up in some of the usual Orthodox beliefs. How is it, then, 
that the usual Orthodox notions of heaven are never confirm- 
ed through them ? 

In the scores of volumes and pamphlets of spiritual litera- 
ture I have read, I have found no statement of a spirit de- 
scribing "winged angels," or "golden harps," or the "throne 
of God "—to which the humblest orthodox Christian thinks 
he will be introduced if he goes to heaven at all. There is no 
more startling and radical opposition to be found between 
the most diverse religious creeds, than that between the be- 
liefs in which the majority of mediums have been brought up 
and the doctrines as to a future life that are delivered through 
them ; there is nothing more marvelous in the history of the 
human mind than the fact that, whether in the back- woods 
of America or in country towns in England, ignorant men 
and women having almost all been brought up in the usual 
sectarian notions of heaven and hell, should, the moment 
they become seized by the strange power of medium ship, 
give forth teachings on this subject which are philosophical 
rather than religious, and which differ wholly from what had 
been so deeply ingrained into their minds. And this state- 
ment is not affected by the fact that communications purport 
to come from Catholic or Protestant, Mahometan or Hindoo 
spirits. Because, while such communications maintain spe- 
cial dogmas and doctrines, yet they confirm the very facts 
which really constitute the spiritual theory, and which in 
themselves contradict the theory of the sectarian spirits. 
The Eoman Catholic spirit, for instance, does not describe 
himself as being in either the orthodox purgatory, heaven, 01 
hell ; the Evangelical Dissenter who died in the firm convic- 
tion that he should certainly "go to Jesus," never describes 
himself as being with Christ, or as ever having seen him, and 
so on throughout. Nothing is more common than for religious 
people at seances to ask questions about God and Christ. In 
reply they never get more than opinions, or more frequently 



A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 61 

the statement that they, the spirits, have no more actual 
knowledge of those subjects than they had while on earth. 
So that the facts are all harmonious ; and the very circum- 
stance of there being sectarian spirits bears witness in two ways 
to the truth of the spiritual theory— it shows that the mind, 
with its ingrained beliefs, is not suddenly changed at death ; 
and it shows that the communications are not the reflection 
of the mind of the medium, who is often of the same religion 
as the communicating spirit, and, because he does not get his 
own ideas confirmed, is obliged to call in the aid of " Satanic 
influence " to account for the anomaly. 

The doctrine of a future state and of the proper prepara- 
tion for it as here developed, is to be found in the works of all 
Spiritualists, in the utterances of all trance-speakers, in the 
communications through all mediums; and this could be 
proved, did space permit, by copious quotations. But it va- 
ries in form and detail in each ; and just as the historian ar- 
rives at the opinions or beliefs of any age or nation, by collat- 
ing the individual opinions of its best and most popular writ- 
ers, so do Spiritualists collate the various statements on the 
subject. They know well that absolute dependence is to be 
placed on no individual communications. They know that 
these are received by a complex physical and mental process, 
both communicator and recipient influencing the result ; and 
they accept the teachings as to the future state of man only 
so far as they are repeatedly confirmed in substance (though 
they may differ in detail) by communications obtained under 
the most varied circumstances, through mediums of the most 
different characters and acquirements, at different times and 
in distant places. Fresh converts are apt to think that, 
once satisfied the communications come from their deceased 
friends, they may implicitly trust to them, and apply them 
universally ; as if the vast spiritual world was all molded to 
one pattern, instead of being, as it almost certainly is, a thou- 
sand times more varied than human society on the earth is, 
or ever has been. The fact that the communications do not 
agree as to the condition, occupations, pleasures, and capaci- 
ties of individual spirits, so far from being a difficulty, as has 
been absurdly supposed, is what ought to have been expect- 
ed ; while the agreement on the essential features of what we 
have stated to be the spiritual theory of a future state of ex- 
istence, is all the more striking, and tends to establish that 
theory as a fundamental truth. 

The assertion so often made, that Spiritualism is the sur- 



62 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 

vival or revival of old superstitions, is so utterly unfounded 
as to be hardly worth notice. A science of human nature 
which is founded on observed facts ; which appeals only to 
facts and experiment ; which takes no beliefs on trust ; which 
inculcates investigation and self-reliance as the first duties of 
intelligent beings ; which teaches that happiness in a future 
life can be secured by cultivating and developing to the ut- 
most the higher faculties of our intellectual and moral nature, 
and by no other method — is and must be the natural enemy of 
all superstition. Spiritualism is an experimental science, and 
affords the only sure foundation for a true philosophy and a 
pure religion. It abolishes the terms "supernatural" and 
"miracle "by an extension of the sphere of law and the 
realm of nature ; and in doing so it takes up and explains 
whatever is true in the superstitions and so-called miracles of 
all ages. It, and it alone, is able to harmonize conflicting 
creeds ; and it must ultimately lead to concord among man- 
kind in the matter of religion, which has for so many ages 
been the source of unceasing discord and incalculable evil ; 
and it will be able to do this because it appeals to evidence 
instead of faith, and substitutes facts for opinions ; and is 
thus able to demonstrate the source of much of the teaching 
that men have so often held to be divine. 

It will thus be seen that those who can form no higher con- 
ception of the uses of Spiritualism, "even if true," than to 
detect crime or to name in advance the winner of the Derby, 
not only prove their own ignorance of the whole subject, but 
exhibit in a marked degree that partial mental paralysis, the 
result of a century of materialistic thought, which renders so 
many men unable seriously to conceive the possibility of a 
natural continuation of human life after the death of the 
body. It will be seen also that Spiritualism is no mere " phy- 
siological " curiosity, no mere indication of some hitherto un- 
known "law of nature"; but that it is a science of vast ex- 
tent, having the widest, the most important, and the most 
practical issues, and as such should enlist the sympathies alike 
of moralists, philosophers and, politicians, and of all who have 
at heart the improvement of society and the permanent ele- 
vation of human nature. 

In concluding this necessarily imperfect though somewhat 
lengthy account of a subject about which so little is probably 
known to most of the readers of the Fortnightly Review, I 
would earnestly beg them not to satisfy themselves with a 



A DEFENCE OF MODEKN SPIRITUALISM. 63 

minute criticism of single facts, the evidence for which, in my 
brief survey, may be imperfect ; but to weigh carefully the 
mass of evidence I have adduced, considering its wide range 
and various bearings. I would ask them to look rather at the 
results produced by the evidence than at the evidence itself 
as imperfectly stated by me ; to consider the long roll of men 
of ability who, commencing the inquiry as skeptics, left it as 
believers, and to give these men credit for not having over- 
looked, during years of patient inquiry, difficulties which at 
once occur to themselves. I would ask them to ponder well 
on the fact, that no earnest inquirer has ever come to a con- 
clusion adverse to the reality of the phenomena ; and that no 
Spiritualist has ever yet given them up as false. I would ask 
them, finally, to dwell upon the long series of facts in human 
history that Spiritualism explains, and on the noble and sat- 
isfying theory of a future life that it unfolds. If they will do 
this, I feel confident that the result I have alone aimed at will 
be attained ; which is, to remove the prejudices and miscon- 
ceptions with which the whole subject has been surrounded, 
and to incite to unbiased and persevering examination of the 
facts. For the cardinal maxim of Spiritualism is, that every 
one must find out the truth for himself. It makes no claim 
to be received on hearsay evidence ; but, on the other hand, 
it demands that it be not rejected without patient, honest and 
fearless inquiry. 



Modern Spiritualism. 

By EPES SARGENT. 



PLA1HETTE : THE DESPAIR OF SCIENCE. 

Being a Full Account of Iota Spiritualism. 

Price, in Illuminated Paper Covers, $1; in Green Cloth, $1.25. Postage, 16c. 
A New Edition, just issued by Roberts Brothers, Boston. 



This volume should be properly called " A History of Modern Spir- 
itualism," for it is a thorough and careful survey of the whole subject 
of well-attested phenomena believed to be spiritual. 

Prof. WM. CROOKES, F. R. S., of London, the celebrated chemist, 
whose scientific verifications of the spiritual phenomena are now cre- 
ating such a sensation, writes, under date of April 17, 1874, — 

4 4 Planchette was the first book I read on Spiritualism, and it still remains , 
in my opinion, the best work to place in the hands of the uninitiated." 

GEO. WM. CURTIS, in Harper's Weekly, says of it, — 
44 It is a copious and popular but faithful summary of the phenomena 
and theories. The ample knowledge and literary skill with which the 
subject is treated make this volume an indispensable manual to all 
who are attracted to this speculation, and it will be read with great 
interest by the skeptic as well as by the believer." 

The Rev. Br. BELLOWS, in the Liberal Christian, says of it, — 
44 It sets forth many important considerations with regard to the phi- 
losophy of the mind, while its historical notices of the development of 
Spiritualism during the last twenty years give a more complete and 
impartial view of the phenomena in question than has thus far been 
presented to the public." 

The New York Express says, — 

44 This is certainly one of the most startling works of our sensational 
age. It purports to give a duly authenticated narration of spiritual mani- 
festations, which are beyond the bounds of credulity by any calm think- 
ing reader ; and yet the asserted facts are given with such an apparent 
truthfulness and distinctness of detail, and the learned and distinguished 
names connected with the scenes described are of such weight, that it 
is impossible to deny the conviction impressed upon the mind that 
either Spiritualism is one of the greatest delusions oc the age, or that 
it is indeed a new manifestation of supernatural power, deserving the 
investigations of our theologians and teachers. The work, from its 
extreme interest, will amply repay a careful perusal." 

The Boston Journal says,— 

44 Mr. Sargent has here collected a vast amount of information, and 
whoever wishes to have an intelligent epitome of the whole history of 
modern Spiritualism will find it in this volume." 



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The World's Medium of the Nineteenth 
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A HISTORY OF HER HEDIUMSHIP 

From Childhood to the Present Time; 

BEING A NARRATIVE OF THE 

Personal Experiences, Sharp Trials, and Liberalizing 

Victories achieved in the cause of Human 

Reason and Spiritual Knowledge. 



Let the heart-stricken read it, and be comforted ; 
Let the earth-weary pernse it, and be glad ; 
Let the world's workers explore it, and be encouraged ; 
Let the doubter scan its incontrovertible testimony, and be confounded ; 
Let the true man and woman, wherever abiding, recognize in it the 
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Origin of Male and Female 13 

Two in One, Abstractly 15 

One Imperfect, Relatively 16 

Inferior States Imitated. 17 

Dissimilarity of the Sexes 18 

Foundation of True Marriage 19 

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Skeptics Concerning Virtue 22 

Ungratified Sexual Impulses 28 

Personal Right to Gratification 29 

Disappointment and Divorcement 31 

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Society and the Individual 34 

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True Marriages and Harmonial Habits 39 

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Fraternal Love Not Conjugal 44 

Psyche to Mother Earth 46 

Free Love, Meaning Sexual Pro- 
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Free Love, a Term of Reproach 43 

Virgins and Virtue, Material and 

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Unworthy Love the Cause of Jealousy. 60 
Womanhood Made Sacred by Mother- 
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Emasculation, the Despair of Conjugal 

Materialism 62 

Diakka, The Scapegoats of Free-Lovers 65 

Brigands in the Conjugal World 69 

Evidences of the Conjugal Attraction. 77 

Harmonial Home and Household 82 

Beauty as a Sexual Attraction 83 

Cleanliness,a Demand of Conjugal Love 85 
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A DEFENCE 



MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 



BT 



ALFRED R. WALLACE, F. R. S., 

AUTHOR OF " THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MALAT ARCHIPELAGO.' 

" EXPLORATIONS OH THE AMAZON," " THE THEOBT 

OP NATURAL SELECTION," 

ETC., ETC. 



WITH A PREFACE 



BY EPES SARGENT. 



BOSTON: 
COLBY AND RICH, 

9 Montgomery Place. 
1874. 



1 7 r 

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